Thursday, 14 February 2008
The Songs That Saved Your Life? In truth, this latest "Greatest Hits" (the first, Moz-endorsed compilation of his 20 year solo career) is no such thing : it merely acts a concise precis of his latter career . Despite featuring some of the bigger numbers from his EMI-years of 1987-94, the overall sense is that this record is either a retrospective rewriting of history ... or hampered by a lack of co-operation from the financially strapped EMI. After all, no true `Best Of' would prefer the Moz-by-Numbers of "In The Future When All's Well" in favour of the genuinely heartbreaking "Now My Heart Is Full" or the unfairly tarnished "My Love Life". What the collection does prove is that Moz is, as he always has been, both stubbornly single minded and possessed by a uniquely singular vision of a world that never existed : where boys stood on street corners, feeling the comfort of the gang, where Morrissey was always the ambitious, perpetual outsider. Always on the outside looking in.
Life is hard enough when you belong here... and when Moz was embraced by the dispossessed, he was proclaiming at the Smiths fame after all, that The World Won't Listen. A true, career-spanning Morrissey best of (including his Smith work) would be possibly the best album ever made. As it stands, this is unfairly and unrepresentatively back-loaded with latter era hits that both distorts the lens of history, fails to present a representative overview, and manages to neglect the fact that Moz always, despite his best intentions, often snuck his best songs on the B-side. Moz always loved the vinyl, the neglected offspring of the not-fit-for-the-album B-side, which is why some of his best ever material - "Don't Make Fun Of Daddy's Voice", "Hairdresser On Fire", "Jack The Ripper", "Ganglord", "I've Changed My Plea To Guilty" (even "How Soon Is Now?" was originally a mere B-Side) - always hid well out of the public eye. Overall, the issue is that not that the music is poor - it undoubtedly isn't, and is clearly the work of genius, and the newer material shows that the well is still far from dry - but that this collection fails to recognise the full enormous breadth of Morrissey's material and omit's a large number of his better songs in favour of the easier-to-licence later songs, and neglects the vast wealth of long-deleted B-Sides that could easily make a separate album in their own right as strong as anything he's done. Simply put, it's an artistically confused record from a truculent, stubborn genius.
The big catch for the average Moz fan are the two new songs - "That's How People Grow Up" and "All You Need Is Me" : the latter characteristically arrogant, whilst also recognising unbridled arrogance is the last bastion of the desperate. And the second CD is a brief blink-and-you'll-miss-it 8 song live concert from the Hollywood Bowl. Again, a more satisfying release would have been a longer concert recording acting as a sequel to 2005's "Live At Earls Court", but the bonus live CD is a fine addition - and the main draw for most devoted fans, despite being the sixth full-length concert release of his solo career.
Frankly, if you want the Best of, or the Actual Greatest Hits, this package fails to satisfy - collect the ancient and bargain-priced EMI compilation "Suedehead" for that : if you want a reflection of where Morrissey sees himself and his work now, then by all means pick up the prosaically titled "Greatest Hits". One can only hope a more comprehensive DVD retrospective makes a release as well. The music? 5/5, but the effort? 2/5. It's a fairly quick and uncharacteristically thoughtless attempt at making a cheap buck out of the Morrissey brand.
Still, with music this good, you can't really complain too much.Only registered users can write comments.
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