Morrissey
World Peace Is None of Your Business
HARVEST
7/10
Morrissey will always be Morrissey. But to truly understand the severity of his recontextualization since he first began pampering life’s complexities, one could conceivably consider what some of his song titles might look like if written in 2014: “Margaret On The Guillotine” would perhaps be, “David Cameron…Seems A Right Chap”; “Barbarism Begins At Home” would be, “Mommy Didn’t Mean To Hit You, But We’re Out Of Ritalin Again”; “Meat Is Murder” would be, “There’s No Gluten In This, Is There?”; and “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” would be, “Xanax…Brilliant!”
Hardly surprising, then, even the gloriously bombastic title of his latest, World Peace Is None of Your Business, seems to be straining for that very same lapsed monumentality. But what’s this? On the opening and title track he decisively swings a scythe through the bloated body of democracy itself with his snarling chants of, “Each time you vote you support the process,” and “The poor must stay poor.” All of this while resplendently resuscitating the towering sonic majesties of Kill Uncle.
The knives are out again on “Earth Is The Loneliest Planet,” with our Steven decrying that this great spinning orb upon which we exist is “the cruelest place” over (huh?) a metallic Flamenco riff. Better still, the (artistically) mean-spirited and condescending Morrissey—that we genuinely do love to death—then disdainfully implores us to “Kick The Bride Down The Aisle,” since he’s apparently discerned that she, “Just wants a slave / To break his back in pursuit of a living wage.” Viva hate! On the luridly creepy “Smiler With Knife,” we even get the mythic “death wish” Steven, of double-decker-bus-crash-suicide infamy. (The pleasure, the privilege!)
So now you can be sure of it. You may ignore Steven Patrick Morrissey all you like, but he will creep back into your thoughts like a bad debt. This incontrovertible masterpiece will surely erase any and all doubt that he will, indeed, be ever a part of our mind’s landscape. And, let’s be honest—we do not not care. This, naturally, leaves us looking feverishly ahead to his next masterpiece, which we can only guess will be titled, Bigmouth Strikes Again and Again and Again…
