That The Smiths’ legacy is regularly defined by reference to Steven Morrisey’s stylish, and sometimes, poncy affectations and provocative lyrics is unfortunate. Without Johnny Marr’s gilded guitar licks, The Smiths may well have been just another foppish ’80s pop band.
The Messenger is Marr’s debut solo record (putting aside the album released under the Johnny Marr and the Healers some years ago). Like the perennially boyish Marr, The Messenger bristles with youthful charm. Tracks like The Right Thing Right is the missing link between the excitement of Swinging London and the anti-Thatcher resistance of Red Wedge (complete with classic wailing Marr guitar echo); European Me should be the soundtrack to England’s demands to Brussels bureaucracy and the irony of a 50-year-old punter writing a song like Upstarts shouldn’t be lost on anyone.
Yet there are the moments when it doesn’t all come together. The Messenger wants to tell an engaging story but falls forlornly into a chair and labours over tired old musical ground, and Lockdown waves a subtle flag of resignation while pretending to incite a moment of passion.
But those lulls are the exception, and never the rule. Generate! Generate! packs a punchy beat, and offers a metaphor for confronting the ever-brutal English music media. Sun And Moon is a modern English garage-pop track for the ages, the delicate but dangerous pop of New Town Velocity could tear down the marketing facade of any flaccid new suburban housing development and Word Starts Attack is The Smiths’ inverted take on Revolver-era Beatles. Johnny Marr still has what it takes.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: The Right Thing Right
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: THE SMITHS, THE STONE ROSES, MODEST MOUSE
In A Word: Solid
