Review Summary: …it’s Morrissey, innit?
You’d think, at a time when suicide rates are constantly on the rise, that writing a song with the line
“If you’re gonna kill yourself, then for God’s sake, kill yourself” might not be the brightest idea, let alone opening an album with it. But this is Morrissey we’re talking about, and that no-flips-given attitude – summed up by the album’s title ‒ is exactly what we’ve come to expect from him over the last 40-ish years. Ever since the Smiths first crashed onto the scene, Steven Patrick Morrissey has earned a reputation for being unashamedly and inimitably himself ‒ whether he’s touching on taboo subjects, criticising the people everyone else bows before or waxing poetic about his troubled love life, no one tells him what he can and can’t say.
I am Not a Dog on a Chain is his thirteenth solo album and finds him just as unfiltered as ever, even if it’s been written from quite a different place than his earlier works – now 60 and with a packed career behind him, he could almost be forgiven for sounding a bit jaded at times.
Musically,
Dog doesn’t take very many risks. It’s not that the album treads old ground as such ‒ there’s nothing here that sounds like “This Charming Man” or even “First of the Gang to Die” ‒ but the styles it plays with aren’t anything terribly original. These 11 tracks are as middle-of-the road as you can get, taking their cues from such genres as 90s pop, soul, country and musical theatre. Thelma Houston’s stunning guest appearance on “Bobby Don’t You Think They Know?” deserves praise, but that aside, these are all styles that have already been done better and more engagingly elsewhere.
But that’s not really a huge problem, because as with any Morrissey solo release, the lyrics are the main event here. Fans of classic Moz lyricism will find much to enjoy, from the biting social commentary of “What Kind of People Live in These Houses?” to the critiques of war and big-game hunting on “Love is On Its Way Out”. “Knockabout World” is the closest this record gets to Smiths-esque lust poetry ‒
“Congratulations, you’re still okay/I’d kiss your lips off any day” could have come straight off their self-titled album – while closer “My Hurling Days are Done”, a reflection on age and the passing of time, is perhaps one of the most poignant things the man has ever written.
Dog does, however, have its creative misfires, and although they’re not enough to wreck the album completely, they don’t half stick out. “The Secret of Music”, clocking in at almost eight minutes, could be half its length and not lose anything of value, and quite what “The Truth About Ruth” is all about is anyone’s guess.
When (if?) Morrissey’s career comes to an end, and the aficionados and music journalists try to rank (sorry) his works, they probably won’t put
I am Not a Dog on a Chain at the top of the pile. While it’s not a bad record in and of itself, from a creative standpoint, it’s far from the best thing he has ever put out. But its very existence should remind us it’s okay to go against the grain, to share our unedited thoughts with the world without fear of backlash. In an industry with too many manufactured, plastic acts who only share strong opinions when they stand to gain something from it, Morrissey holds up a mirror to them. And by the looks of it, he doesn’t plan on going away or toning things down anytime soon. Love may be on its way out, but Bigmouth isn’t – and he probably couldn’t care less how you feel about that.
