Give up education as a bad mistake

The Smiths: Meat Is Murder

“Meat Is Murder” is an awful dirge of a song, which I suppose is exactly what they were going for, so uh, kudos I suppose, although having lived on a farm in Saskatchewan I find cows’ mooing to be quite irritating and much prefer the drills and power saws, which I guess runs counter to Morrissey’s message. Anyway, it’s a pretty lousy song, the worst in The Smiths’ catalogue and indeed the source of most ill will toward this album. On the plus side, it is the last song and most of what comes before is great.

“The Headmaster Ritual” decrying (as Morrissey often did) English public school life and in particular corporal punishment and implied sexual abuse, is one of the great Smiths songs. Johnny Marr’s guitar is glistening and perfect. It is not humourless, either, the little note ‘Please excuse me from gym, I’ve got this terrible cold coming on’ is a funny moment that shows Morrissey wasn’t all doom and gloom, even on this album. The song is twinned by the almost-funky and equally vigorous and engaging corporal punishment song “Barbarism Begins at Home” near the album’s end. Hard to fault them for it, given that the two songs are the finest the album offers and indeed a couple of the best the band ever wrote. This is the first self-produced Smiths album, after disappointment with the subdued sound of the debut, and the sound is slick and sprightly.

The unfortunate thing about Meat Is Murder is that it feels as if The Smiths are casting about for direction. Their debut and subsequent singles compilation Hatful of Hollow were unified and brilliant, showcasing the remarkable, invigorating guitar of Johnny Marr and the lyrical felicity of Morrissey (not to mention that bizarre and intriguing singing voice). Meat Is Murder doesn’t hold together quite so well. They delve into rockabilly with “Rusholme Ruffians” and “What She Said” goes a little wild with the blues guitar riff that doesn’t fit terribly well with the rest of the song (come to think of it, “Nowhere Fast” has the exact same problem). The sole single, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” is an ephemeral, gauzy piece that was a peculiar choice indeed. “How Soon Is Now?” (added to American versions of the album) is an astonishing tunnel of harmonized reverb, one of the most enthralling feats of guitar the eighties produced and a vast epic of a single, still entrancing today. Given the eclecticism of the album, its addition in the middle does no harm to the already entirely askew flow, although it certainly has a distinctly different, cold sound that makes it stand out from everything else.

As is to be expected, the least of Smiths albums is still in its own right a pretty fine album, even though it suffers from unevenness and their one truly terrible song (“Vicar in a Tutu” has nothing on this).

79% => ****

~ by jshopa on July 3, 2008.