Morrissey: a small talent requires a small article. Briefly: without his crack band as backup, he slid into repetition and self-pity pretty swiftly. Thousands of fans stuck with them, proving the people who’d insulted the Smiths’ fanbase right. In detail:
Viva Hate: abstruse guitar picking, political naivety, lengthy songs throwing autobiographical titbits to the baying hordes of worshippers. Low Point: “Late Night, Maudlin Street” heading into its fourth or fifth grinding minute.
Kill Uncle: weedy instrumentation backing weedy songs, many intentionally ‘comic’ but unintentionally ‘horrible’. Notorious for depth of lyrical plumbing viz. “King Leer”. Low Point: “Found Found Found”, love song for Michael Stipe.
Your Arsenal: Return to ‘glam rock’. But Morrissey has the glamour of a sausage and the rockin’ potential of Rheims Cathedral. Tiresome controversy stirred up by equally useless NME masks laziness of record in general. Low Point: “I Know It’s Going To Happen Someday”, a song so poor it was covered by David Bowie.
Vauxhall And I: Occasional flickers of interest caused by Moz indulgently trading off prior controv – unpleasant martyr complex in evidence. Music plods along. Only half album is irredeemable, therefore praised to rafters by critics. Low Point: “The Lazy Sunbathers”. “Too jaded to question stagnation” – ring any bells, Mozophiles?
Southpaw Grammar: They’d not written enough tracks, so they stretched two of them on the Song Rack. Low Point: “The Operation” – back in 1983, did anyone think a Morrissey record would feature a drum solo?
Maladjusted: Really, staggeringly, bottom-of-barrel awful. You’re as likely to be able to remember what you had for breakfast 12 years ago to the day as you are to remember any of these songs. Surely released to win a bet. Low Point: the one where he whinges about getting busted ripping his backing band off. Oh dear.