There’s a simultaneous feeling of excitement and dread amongst fans of The Smiths when we hear that Morrissey is releasing a new album. Excitement at the thought that maybe, just maybe, we might get a repeat of Vauxhall and I (1994). Dread, because we know deep down that we won’t.
Low in High School is Morrissey’s eleventh studio album since The Smiths disbanded in 1987. Recently, he has been losing momentum in his career as his promotional appearances are often overshadowed by the controversial political statements he makes during them. In the early stages of promotion on BBC 6 Music he accused members of the UK Independence Party of rigging the leadership election against the openly anti-Islam candidate Anne Marie Waters. In his most recent interview with the German Spiegel Online, he resorts to victim blaming when discussing the allegations of sexual assault made against Kevin Spacey. It has been common practice by people in the arts to ‘separate the art from the artist’ but that is a practice that Morrissey proves we need to abandon.
The lyrics of this album are as reactionary and sneering as his political views, with the Wildean wit that he was so heralded for in the eighties dwindling into sheer immaturity. In the closing track entitled ‘Israel’, (which one cannot help but feel was included in the final listing simply because of the controversy that it would cause amongst his fan base) Morrissey achieves a new level of what reviewer Alexis Petridis has described as ‘wilful ugliness’. In the final verse he uses the language of the schoolyard to summarise the decades-long conflict in the country: “They”, referring to the Arab population and the critics of the Israeli government “who reign abuse upon you”, simply doing so because “they are jealous of you”.
While musical exploration is something to be encouraged, especially with a musician who has been performing for over thirty years and could fall into the trap of simply copying and pasting lyrics onto old instrumentals, Morrissey’s exploration is a bit confused. There’s something very disconcerting about an album that opens with corrosive glam rock guitars, blends them in with Spanish flamenco in the middle, and ends with a klezmer infused ballad. The album lacks a defining sound, and the only thing uniting the twelve songs as an album and not just a random collection is the overarching theme of blissful unaccountability.
His first single of this album, ‘Spent the Day in Bed’, is the worst offender for all this. It opens with eighties arcade laser sounds and electronics that stopped being experimental in the same period. The chorus is completely out of place, appearing as an angry right-wing rant that he belted out one night in the pub and wrote down on his iPhone because he thought it sounded deep: “Stop watching the news! Because the news contrives to frighten you,”
The sentiment of “I spent the day in bed / As the workers stay enslaved” is Morrissey cashing in on the image of his past self, when he sang about being young and on the dole and hating Thatcher – he’s still laying around, now because he can afford to as a millionaire, and instead of giving out about Thatcher he’s campaigning for UKIP from his California mansion.
If you are still interested in listening to this album there’s a t-shirt design going viral at the moment that says: ‘Love The Smiths | Hate Morrissey’, and you might want it by the time you get to track four.
Rating: ●○○○○
