Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 03/04/06
Label: Attack

Imagine what it is to be Morrissey. To inhabit that shell of expectation and wake each day as a caricature: part James Dean, part sniggering "Carry On" star. To a small but influential demographic (JK Rowling, Will Self, probably David Cameron) he remains a totemic reminder of the past - an encapsulation of their terrible teenage years, a bad haircut from 1986 or the time when they borrowed Grandad's hearing aid for a fashion statement. Yes, the world may change, people grow up, get married have kids, but Mozza remains reassuringly the same.

His unwavering worldview is perpetually adolescent. He suffers so you don't have to. You can't imagine him living in the normal world, having doubts, wearing a tracksuit, having a laugh. Heaven knows, you'd think he'd be miserable of it by now. After six lean years, this nostalgic groundswell erupted for "You Are The Quarry", which, considering the glowing plaudits, you'd think he'd patched up with Johnny Marr and re-scaled his mid-'80s heights. In truth it was a so-so effort, mired by the cloth-fingered contributions of co-writers Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte. Absence, it seemed, had made the heart grow fonder.

Now decamped to Rome for the follow-up and with Tony Visconti and Ennio Morricone onboard, the musical side of the equation was always going to be intriguing this time around, and so it proves. "Ringleader Of The Tormenters" is no "Queen Is Dead", but as a solo artist, it could well be Morrissey's finest hour. It's certainly his most revealing. Most obviously on "Dear God, Please Help Me", the epic string-driven highpoint which finds Mozza soliciting the streets of Rome looking for man action, carrying "explosive kegs" in his Y-fronts.

He finds it too. "Now I'm spreading your legs, with mine in between…" sings our horny protagonist in a pitch between high passion and evident relief. "The heart feels free…" he croons, kegs evidently detonated. Mama Mia, lock up your sons. As Morrissey's coming out song it's a simply astonishing must-hear five-minutes, up there with Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" in its down and dirty celebration of bedroom mores. The sexually charged atmosphere runs over into first single "You Have Killed Me" ("I entered nothing, and nothing entered me, 'til you came with the key…").

Suddenly Morrissey doesn't seem so one-dimensional. You'd picture him delivering such lines on "Top Of The Pops" with wicked relish. These aren't the only highlights. "In The Future When All's Well" reprises the melody from "Rusholme Ruffians", "To Me You Are A Work Of Art" - another great single in the making - runs free with subtleties and magic while closer "At Last I Am Born" is simply majestic - "Once I was a mess of guilt because of the flesh, it's remarkable what you can learn when you are born, born, born…"

"Ringleader Of The Tormenters" is the sound of Morrissey burning his past bridges and finally liberated. If it once drove him mad, that he wanted the one he can't have, those shackles are well and truly off. Along with several other garments. Quite honestly, he's never sounded so alive and free - or, more importantly, human.

    by Adam Webb