Flatbasset Radio's Album Of The Week for the week of September 15th-21st, 2014:
Morrissey - World Peace Is None Of Your Business
01. World Peace Is None Of Your Business
02. Neal Cassady Drops Dead
03. I'm Not A Man
04. Istanbul
05. Earth Is The Loneliest Planet
06. Staircase At The University
07. The Bullfighter Dies
08. Kiss Me A Lot
09. Smiler With Knife
10. Kick The Bride Down The Aisle
11. Mountjoy
12. Oboe Concerto
Let's just get this out of the way now: I'm a Morrissey fan. And not just a, "Yeah, I dig Morrissey" sort of fan. More like a "I own both a hardcover and paperback version of Mozzer's Autobiography and, incredibly, both of them were given to me as gifts" type of fan. Looking at my Last.fm account, Morrissey & The Smiths have accounted for 4,417 plays, ranking them first and fourth overall in my library. It's bordering on unhealthy.
It's been five years since Morrissey left us with the excellent Years Of Refusal. In the interim he's done pretty much the most stereotypically Morrissey-esque things you can imagine. He's booked massive tours, he's cancelled said tours, he's fallen ill, he's feuded with websites, feuded with record labels, feuded with concert venues, recorded songs that never saw the light of day, fired shots at British royalty, fired shots at American politicians, and recorded PSA's for PETA. Honestly, outside of publishing the aforementioned Autobiography, Morrissey hasn't really done anything outside of the rote business of being Morrissey for quite some time.
I suppose, then, that I shouldn't have been surprised when World Peace Is None Of Your Business turned out to be the least interesting album of old Mozzer's career. After five years, you'd think the man would have something, anything, new to say. Alas, World Peace is arguably his most political record to date and, for a man who's built a career out of connecting with fans via personal struggles, this is not a turn for the more interesting.
Leading things off we're treated to the album's titular "World Peace Is None Of Your Business," an enjoyable and worthy follow up to You Are The Quarry's lead track "America Is Not The World." Morrissey and boys sound fantastic as Morrissey laments a system that's so broken the only way to stop it is complete withdrawal. "Each time you vote, you support the process..." the man laments. It's an intriguing turn from the typical "Your Vote Makes A Difference" jargon that most of us have been fed our whole lives, however, for a man who built a life & career of dropping out of systems he didn't care for, his strategy for change shouldn't come as much of a surprise.
After the comically trivial "Neal Cassady Drops Dead," the album loses all of it's momentum on the bordering-on-self-parody ballad "I'm Not A Man." Morrissey's track record with large scale ballads has always been hit-and-miss. For every brillliant "I Know It's Over" and "Now My Heart Is Full" we're treated to a handful of clunkers like "You Know I Couldn't Last" and "Life Is A Pigsty." "I'm Not A Man" is, almost unquestionably, the worst of these ballads. Beginning with over a minute of slow-burning noise (sucking the life out of the record), Morrissey goes on to warble cliche upon cliche as to why he's "not a man" because he doesn't eat animals or play sports. These would have been understandable laments 30 years ago, but Mozzer's 55 years old now with a legacy that's already written in stone. It's hard to believe that this is a man who feels the need to defend his own masculinity this far into his career.
From there we're treated to a run of songs that wouldn't have passed muster as You Are The Quarry B-sides. "Istanbul" is an uninteresting re-working of Ringleader Of The Tormentor's "I Will See You In Far Off Places," "Earth Is The Loneliest Planet" is what you would title a song if you were making a novelty Morrissey playlist, "Staircase At The University," "The Bullfighter Dies," "Kiss Me A Lot..." these tracks are all as lackluster as their titles imply (though "Kiss Me A Lot" features the albums best singalong hook, assuming you can make your peace with singing lyrics like "Kiss me a lot, kiss me all over the place...").
"Smiler With Knife" stands as the lone late album standout. A curious little ballad that harkens back to Ringleader's "The Father Who Must Be Killed." Guitarist Jesse Tobias takes a break from his usual punk-ish rush to pen a thoughtful, slow-burning number in which Mozzer mixes sex & violence in a manner that only three decades of pathos could sell. Unfortunately, "Smiler With Knife" also stands as an example of just what's wrong with World Peace Is None Of Your Business. Morrissey's lyrics & melody are nearly completely separate from Tobias intriguing instrumentation. They essentially take turns.
Now, if you'll allow the Mozzer nerd in me to come out (er... more so...), I'd like to bring up something Vini Reilly once said. Reilly is known to some as the man behind Factory Records guitar nerds The Durrutti Column. He's best known to Morrissey fans as the guitarist & sometimes co-writer on Viva Hate. After recording Reilly's "I Don't Mind If You Forget Me," Reilly mentioned how impressed he was with Morrissey's ability to find new melodies in the instrumentals. He was most surprised that Morrissey put the verse where Reilly had envisioned a chorus and vice versa.
Now, I'm not saying Morrissey has suddenly lost his ear for such a thing, but nearly every track of World Peace Is None Of Your Business reeks of a chosen path of least resistance. Nowhere on the album are we treated to one of Morrissey's trademark melodic let turns. Those brilliant moments when the listener expects the song to zig and Morrissey, with his unparalleled command of vocals, zags, giving the song a jolt of life, are sorely lacking here. Even more than the lyrics and the persona, those hooks are the bedrock of Morrissey's career. Even Morrissey, if he'd set his ego aside, would likely acknowledge that his career has had more than its share of clunker lyrics. However, he'd also likely acknowledge the power of a good hook over lyrics. I read Autobiography. There's a reason he fell in love with Mott The Hoople just like there's a reason he's taking shots at Allan Ginsburg on "Neal Cassady Drops Dead."
All of which is a real shame because Morrissey sounds great. His vocals, whatever lyrics they may be in service of, sway and soar throughout the album in a manner usually reserved for merely a track or two. His band, likewise, is in fine form. They work their way through tried-and-true formulas and new experiments alike with aplomb, helping to give the album (and Morrissey) a solid foundation. Sadly, that's only two-thirds of the equation and Mozzer's lackluster, hookless lyrics leave the album flat and tired. Here's hoping he'll have something interesting to say in 2019.
