{"id":9413,"date":"2014-08-29T17:20:50","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T17:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=9413"},"modified":"2014-08-29T17:20:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T17:20:50","slug":"fear-of-music-this-stephen-patrick-is-no-morrissey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2014\/08\/29\/fear-of-music-this-stephen-patrick-is-no-morrissey\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear of Music :: This Stephen Patrick is No Morrissey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Morrissey\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Devin King<\/p>\n

July 2014 sees the release of Morrissey\u2019s latest and perhaps most Morrissian-titled album to date: World Peace is None of Your Business. <\/i>Morrissey the Performer has always demanded a closer critical review, as his actions and words \u2013 both in his music and outside of the music itself \u2013 are a closely scripted characterization of Morrissey the Character. More than ever, with this latest release, there is an evident slipping of the curtain to reveal Morrissey himself rather than Morrissey the Character. This later period Morrissey seems to be, intentionally or not, dropping many of the idiosyncrasies that define the Morrissey character.<\/p>\n

Without making this a review of the latest album, it is worth noticing some of the changes between the Morrissey of The Smiths and his early solo output. These changes appear most evidently in the lyrics to these latest songs as well as in Morrissey\u2019s mannerisms themselves. Any analysis of Morrissey should refer to Gavin Hopps\u2019 work on the subject, Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart, <\/i>a masterful work that clearly illuminates the very things that make Morrissey Morrissey.<\/p>\n

Hopps applies a quote from Henry James regarding Oscar Wilde to the work of Morrissey: \u201cthe singer\u2019s lyrics are a trap for the literalist.\u201d Traditionally, this has been true in Morrissey\u2019s work. \u00a0Using \u201cSweet and Tender Hooligan\u201d as an example, Hopps describes how the narrative voice is complicated by the lyrical content, the ironizing accents of an exterior perspective. Which is to say, the ironic way <\/i>in which the lyrics are sung are contrary to the subject matter which seem more sympathetic to the \u201cold man\u201d written in the song. A literal reading of this song is thusly complicated.<\/p>\n

An important aspect of Morrissey\u2019s early work is its sense of play, with words, sound and meaning. Even if Morrissey isn\u2019t trying to have a uniform message he\u2019s trying to get across to the listener, he can often be characterized as seemingly toying with the listener\u2019s sense of meaning or expectation. Though not universally true (\u201cMeat is Murder\u201d is a good example to the contrary) we find that this latest album has Morrissey dropping some of this sense of play for a more literal approach to songwriting.<\/p>\n

The opening track, \u201cWorld Peace is None of Your Business,\u201d details several atrocities committed by governments and informs the reader that \u201cevery time you vote you support the process.\u201d Like the Old Man Yelling at a Cloud, in his age Morrissey seems to have become more blunt in his politics. That is most evident in his strongest political passion, animal rights, which inform several of the tracks here. \u201cThe Bullfighter Dies,\u201d includes the lyrics \u201cthe bullfighter dies \/ and nobody cries \/ because everyone wants the bull to survive,\u201d which seems especially lazy in contrast to other Moz lyrics, not simply for its obvious and approximate rhymes. Had \u201cCemetry Gates\u201d been written this way, it would have went \u201cI stole the words from Wilde \/ because his diction drives me wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than just lyrically, the sense of play from Morrissey\u2019s utterances seem more absent here than before. The groaning, altering, yodeling, sarcasm and interjections are largely abandoned on this record. That is, the \u201cstaged ineptitude\u201d of his singing is gone, in favour of a more straightforward singing style (matching the straightforward, modern rock production.) Hopps provides the \u201csacrificial\u201d nature that Morrissey sings the words \u201clive or die\u201d on \u201c Heaven Knows I\u2019m Miserable Now,\u201d in contrast to how the rest of the lyrics are sung. The melisma-by-way-of-yodelling that is a signature way in which Morrissey has sung (think \u201cwhat difference does it may-ay-ayyyke\u201d) is almost completely absent. Both lyrically and in performance, a consistent trend on this album is a shying away from a sense of play or camp and towards the literal voice which he has rejected so often in the past.<\/p>\n

This too is perhaps in line with critical evaluations of Morrissey. Hopps notes that \u201cwriting about Morrissey feels a little like Monty Python\u2019s \u2018Spanish Inquisition\u2019 sketch, as one is forever having to back up and begin again to take in some additional, often contradictory perspective.\u201d And so it may be that the Morrissey of 2014 isn\u2019t so interested in the projection of a character that he has been presenting in the past. Largely, the Morrissey that we all know and many love is a finely honed series of idiosyncrasies through the lens of a playful spirit. The Stephen Patrick of World Peace is None of Your Business <\/i>is not Morrissey, or at least the Morrissey we have always loved. Which perhaps makes it the most Morrissey album of all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Devin King July 2014 sees the release of Morrissey\u2019s latest and perhaps most Morrissian-titled album to date: World Peace is None of Your Business. Morrissey the Performer has always demanded a closer critical review, as his actions and words \u2013 both in his music and outside of the music itself \u2013 are a closely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[338],"class_list":["post-9413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","tag-fear-of-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}