plorentz's Full Review: Ringleader of the Tormentors by Morrissey
There are two kinds of people in the world. Actually three. There are those who love, love, love their Morrissey. And then, there those who just don't like him at all. And then, there are those who have never heard of him. And then, actually, there's a fourth, extremely rare type of person in the world as well. I call them the Morrissey-curious. These are people who pride themselves on being musically open-minded, especially when it comes to artists of a certain artistic/critical/commercial stature, who at various points in the last 20 or so years have made an effort to enjoy Morrissey, and actually may have enjoyed (but just as likely haven't) bits and pieces of his body of work, without ever truly being won over by the man.
But one thing that seems to be an accepted truth across these varied points of view is that Morrissey is one of those artists who are as established and unchangeable in what they do as a theme park attraction. Like Space Mountain, the popular perception goes, he always delivers the same ride that people either thrill to or vomit after (or don't ride at all, or are merely curious about), and he ain't goin' anywhere soon. But what Morrissey was doing in the mid-90s was actually very much at odds with popular perception.
In fact, following the artistic (and to a smaller extent commercial) breakthrough that was his 1992 album Your Arsenal, the former Smiths frontman grew increasingly ambitious with his writing, bringing orchestral textures into Vauxhall & I (1994), directly quoting Shostakovich and exploring prog-rock overtones (not to mention two-minute drum solos) on Southpaw Grammar (1996), and getting back in touch with his Inner New York Doll (he's a former president of the New York Dolls fan club and facilitated the recent reunion of the band documented in the new film New York Doll) on his 1997 record Maladjusted - before disappearing into a longer-than-the-Smiths'-existence funk of canceled interviews and where-the-hell-is-he-and-what-the-hell's-he-up-to-now? speculation.
That all ended with You Are The Quarry two years ago - an album that, well contrary to just about anyone's expectations, reminded people that they not only loved Morrissey, but also that they missed him like hell. Unlike his more ambitious mid-90s just-before-the-drop-out records, You Are The Quarry was Morrissey delivering precisely the theme park attraction Morrissey we'd all come to expect in sharp, vivid, and throroughly enjoyable detail. There were songs about vacuous pop stars and detestable politicians; sarcastic screeds against organized religion and ambiguously gay odes to lovable street hoodlums. It was quintessential Morrissey. And it was wonderful.
But on his new album Ringleader of the Tormentors, recorded in Italy with the venerable Tony Visconti, Man of a Thousand David Bowie Records, at the boards, Morrissey sets out to remind us that he is not, in fact, an amusement park ride, but an actual musicista, a quattrocentista - a capital-A Artist - and if the last record brought all his fans (and a few newbies) back to the fold, Ringleader actually picks up where the artist formerly known as "on hiatus" left off back in '97. It's a record of Coliseum-scale bombast, brimming with images of sex - yeah, I said "sex" - and even more death (especially of the violent variety). And it makes You Are the Quarry seem positively quaint by comparison.
It's not clear whether Morrissey really dropped his self-imposed oath of chastity and got himself some (presumably male) booty since last we saw him, or if he's just been watching a little too much classic Italian cinema lately. At any rate, so sayeth the notoriously celibate Moz in the lead single:
I entered nothing and nothing entered me
Until you came with the key
Only to sum the experience up on the chorus with characteristic fatalism:
As I live and breathe, you have killed me, you have killed me
As a single, the song "You Have Killed Me" comes off a little tame at first, but it's got a steady rocking beat, and the kind of chorus that grows more and more urgent every time you hear it - a stealth earworm. There's a wonderfully subversive sense of liberation by sexual victimization (or is it victimization by sexual liberation?) at play that makes the song both immediately catchy and emotionally complex - and sorta sexy to boot.
(heh heh... he said "boot")
While much of the record continues along those sorts of stagey, 70s glam-inspired riffs, the prevailing sound of the record is that of a classic gladiator movie soundtrack (starring Steve Reeves). "I Will See You in Far Off Places" starts the record off with a wailing Meditteranean chord progression punctuated with the regular pounding of a thunderous bass drum - as if we're hearing the approach of Caesar's legions on their way into battle from miles away over the Italian hills. And murderous ditties like "The Youngest Was the Most Loved" and "The Father Who Must Be Killed" are augmented by a demonic-sounding chorus of boys, veering dangerously close to the edge of amelody, as if their schoolbus had just scraped along the guardrails of a treacherous mountain highway and they were staring into the faces of their own just-barely-averted mortalities.
If songs like "I Just Want to See the Boy Happy" and "To Me You Are a Work of Art" - in which the singer offers us his heart, only to suggest that he doesn't have one (how Morrissey is that?) - are par-for-the-course, standard-issue type stuff, it's still great to hear them in the context of what may be Morrissey's most liberated-sounding music. The sheer bigness of everything about this record fairly justifies every song's existence - even if a few of them tend to be merely average. "Life is a Pigsty", for example, is nothing special really - but, contrary to that general rule about brevity being the soul of just about everything, the song actually increases in power as it goes on (and on and on and on), wallowing in its own misanthropy, gleefully rolling around in its own rainy April day mud.
It's great to hear Morrissey being ambitious again, but most of all, you can actually hear him having fun on this record. There's a sense of intoxication to it all, as if after years of damn near monkish clean living, Morrissey's finally allowed himself some naughtiness. Still, there's nothing here that's going to win the man any new converts, but Ringleader of the Tormentors is cause for rejoicing amongst St. Morrissey's disciples. After all, we just want to see the boy happy too.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Ringleader of the Tormentors" by Morrissey
Attack / Sanctuary Records
Released 4/4/06
Produced by Tony Visconti
50 min.
SONGS: I Will See You In Far Off Places - Dear God Please Help Me - You Have Killed Me - The Youngest Was the Most Loved - In the Future All's Well - The Father Who Must Be Killed - Life is a Pigsty - I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero Now - On the Streets I Ran - To Me You Are a Work of Art - I Just Want to See the Boy Happy - At Last I Am Born
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