antipopper

There’s been so much fucking death lately it’s not funny, and my brother has somehow succeeded in driving me into the waiting arms of Morrissey. Not really in the obvious, gloomy sense of his persona — I’ve never really been a fan — but more for the texture that his band produces as an ensemble. Morrissey’s voice is still a key element, but I’d like to ignore his current renaissance as a star and instead subsume his self-monumentalisation into a more “generic” vision of the comfort of men. It’s not particularly interesting music, sonically, but I find it strangely snuggley — much more than The Smiths, whose strength always seemed to be in being so unexpectedly sleek and shiny (here, too, Moz as an institution still perversely recedes from view for me). Meanwhile, Morrissey’s unassuming band makes dignified, romantic noise that sounds like warm grey rain. It’s comforting. And Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer are such strangely handsome rockabilly lads.