Moz and Chainlessness

I wouldn't say I am Not a Dog on a Chain, Morrissey's new album, is his best though, oddly, looking over the lyrics to-day, I'm liking it better than I did listening to it. An essential part of Morrissey's music has always been a rumination on his own unattractiveness coexisting with unrequited longing. The paradox for much of his career has been that, as much as he sings about how unappealing he is, he's always had legions of fans wanting to fuck him. Now that many of his fans (though far less than certain media outlets insist) have been coaxed away by the increasingly clique-ish pressures of Internet politics, in a sense, Morrissey's message agrees with his reality for the first time. To some extent, I think the politics is the pretext for the inevitable abandonment of an aging star by its fandom, something Morrissey cannily presaged in his lyrics many times, going all the way back to The Smiths' "Rubber Ring". The final track on I am Not a Dog on a Chain, "My Hurling Days Are Done", finds its singer alone as usual only now, as he draws closer to the end of his life, he finds the additional sorrow of having no-one to share his experiences with:

But now my hurling days are done
And there is no one to tell and there's nowhere to run

I don't think Morrissey's had a really strong album since 2009's Years of Refusal largely because his expressions of need for physical love have become increasingly awkward--yet, I suspect this is a deliberate point. I'm often reminded of one of my favourite lyrics from "Seasick, Yet Still Docked", a song from his 1992 album Your Arsenal:

My love is as sharp as a needle in your eye
You must be such a fool to pass me by

In these two lines he shows how his apparent great need is exactly what makes him so repellent. So on I am Not a Dog on a Chain we have "Darling, I Hug a Pillow" with this supremely awkward chorus:

Why can't you give me some physical love?
Why can't you give me some physical love?
Everything else is in place, except physical love

Oou, la la. This is sure to woo a Cyberman. The song also involves, as the title suggests, the singer hugging a pillow in futile effort to subdue his loneliness. I wonder if Morrissey is referencing or is aware of the body pillows popular in Asian countries typically featuring prints of popular anime characters.

Otaku culture is certainly an appropriate subject for Morrissey especially as we have moved into an era where people are far less conflicted about the instinctive disdain they feel for unattractive men.

Given Morrissey's controversial political stances from the past few years, such as supporting For Britain, one would expect more pointedly political lyrics. For Britain, called "far right" by its detractors, is really more liberal given its position on civil and animal rights--the "far right" comes in only for its stance on Muslim immigrants to Britain (it's against) and general isolationism. I'm not intellectually lazy enough to say that cautioning against Islamic values entering British law is inherently Islamophobic but I don't agree with Morrissey's support of the group. Another annoying thing about modern Internet politics is the persistent need to remind people that just because I like someone's music doesn't mean I like everything about them. I've known there were things I didn't like about Morrissey as a person for decades, ever since I heard how he insulted Tori Amos back stage at a show--when she complimented his music, he'd replied saying essentially, how would you know what good music is? I'm a long time fan of Tori Amos though, it's true, her creative spark seems to have been extinguished for a very long time, it's still not a very nice thing to say to her. But, then, I like Richard Wagner, who was an anti-Semite. I like artists for their art, which is the only thing I can truly know about them. WHICH SHOULD BE FUCKING OBVIOUS.

But in terms of politics, mostly I am Not a Dog on a Chain paints with a very broad brush, with songs like "Knockabout World", which seems to be about the general pettiness of the media without taking any particular side or stance. "The Truth about Ruth" seems to be an oddly banal song about transgenderism--then as I looked at the lyrics to-day I started to think this is another one where what seemed a flaw is kind of the point. The song concludes:

Ruth is John
Ruth is John
And sooner or later
We are all calmed down.

"Ruth is John", the chorus, is a plodding chant, as though the point of this is, "We'd all hoped there'd be something more exciting about being trans."

The reason the pointed awkwardness of the lyrics is a little hard to catch is that there's nothing remotely awkward about Morrissey's voice or the music arrangement. Maybe this stuff made more sense in the 80s and 90s when The Smiths and Morrissey's early solo work deliberately paired insightful, credible lyrical portraits of youthful awkwardness with strange, experimental music and vocals. The strongest track on I am Not a Dog on a Chain is a smooth duet with Thelma Houston with enigmatic lyrics, "Bobby, Don't You Think They Know?"

Old Songs Offer Another Glimpse Over the Treetops

We've reached a time when songs that were once innocuous or liberal now express views many would consider dangerous or far right. This is the argument quietly made by Morrissey's new cover album, California Son, released yesterday to much frothing of mouths and gnashing of teeth by some of the most virulent Morrissey haters. Reading the reviews for the album has been more fascinating, though, for the ones that describe being perplexed by Morrissey's choices that seem self-evidently incongruous. This gave me hope. This, more than anything, confirms that Morrissey has achieved his goal; he's forced people to think.

Even many of the out and out negative reviews praise Morrissey's voice and he does sound fantastic, matching Roy Orbison pitch-for-pitch in a cover of "It's Over". Predictably, the The Guardian's short and snippy review denies the album is good even on a technical level. How can anyone really say Morrissey's crazy to think there are journalists with a grudge against him?

But over and over, from positive to mixed to negative, critics express confusion. What can it mean that the man who supports For Britain would cover Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan? "Morrissey’s Covers LP ‘California Son’ Shows Off His Golden Voice, Perplexing Politics" is the title of the Rolling Stone review. The Guardian reviewer says, "Quite why Morrissey has decided to record an album of protest-adjacent covers at this point in his career is unclear," despite chiding the singer for having a predilection for trolling.

Then there's the conflicted review at A.V. Club which can't understand why this purportedly right winged monster would so beautifully cover Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in their Game", the most brilliant choice on the album in terms of making a political statement. Anyone who denies the relevance of the song's lyrics to to-day's political arena is in a deep ideological trance.

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than the blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin, " they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game

In these verses you can see shades of the right wing exploitation of poor whites in both the U.S. and Britain and you can see the left wing exploitation of identity politics. It's an extremely timely song, fitting in with a recurrent theme on the album, like in his cover of "Suffer the Little Children" by Buffie St. Marie, of socially systemic indoctrination.

The Bob Dylan song is about the assassination of the black civil rights activist Medgar Evers' by a racist white man. The Rolling Stone review even takes a swipe at Dylan's original, suggesting it "absolves the killer's racism". There's another point of view on how this song would make sense for Morrissey, though. For his views on halal animal killing and his support of For Britain he's been called anti-Islam despite his flat out denial of this and the fact that he's written songs like "I Will See You in Far Out Places" and "Asian Rut". Despite being closely associated with his home town of Manchester throughout his career, no-one seems to take into account how the 2017 suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester may have influenced his point of view. If you adapt the lyrics for the perspective of that assassin you can see that there are other ideologies that compel their human pawns to horrific acts. Which again fits with the album's theme of people misled by poorly reasoned philosophies but the point is that these killers are as human as anyone else. And if it was recorded by Morrissey with the Manchester killer in mind it's no more a criticism of Islam as a whole than the Dylan song was a criticism of Christianity or southern U.S. culture. Any listener who automatically draws the conclusion that it is reveals his or her own lazy thought processes.

And the album justifies the praise for its technical brilliance. Morrissey's voice is in top form.