Morrissey
Make-Up Is a Lie
SIRE/WARNER
Whether writing and singing as a wronged-rank sentimentalist or a righteousness-seeking prince of present-day prickly wit and wordplay, Morrissey is still pretty much an antisocial figure. At times baroquely neurotic, at others crabbily cynical, much of the eloquence that comes from such a stance—whether bearing down on slippery-slope social critique or isolationist personal hubris—gets lost now when thinking of him in league with the stupider right-winged things he’s said. So, then, to get through the distinctions of his rich baritone and cleverly complex emotions, we must trick ourselves into remembering Morrissey as he was: holding up lilies, obsessed with Alain Delon and David Johansen, and fainting with damned praise.
This game isn’t always difficult to play on Make-Up Is a Lie, as so much of it is a return to several fine forms: a welcome-home to his earliest US label for the first time in over three decades, along with reunions with two of his most sympathetic creatives in producer Joe Chiccarelli and songwriting partner Alain Whyte. On Whyte co-penned tracks such as “The Monsters of Pig Alley,” “Notre-Dame,” and “Boulevard,” Morrissey matches every one of his mischievous Coward-esque observations (some sparkling and insightful, some tritely over-obvious) with a brand of melancholy pop so winning that it’s as if time stopped at the collaborators’ You Are the Quarry union.
Even when this trio of creatives steps out of their comfort zone and showers Morrissey’s hale and hearty vocals in the warm, amniotic electro-pop of “Notre-Dame,” it almost (almost) distract the listener from the fact that he’s found conspiracy theories in the flaming of the world’s best-known cathedral. Remaining in good voice, the lullaby psychedelia of “Zoom Zoom the Little Boy” touches on a Doctor-Doolittlesque display of saving “the cats and the dogs and the bats and the frogs and the badgers and the hedgehogs” before it’s too late; the romantic-epic sweep of “Many Icebergs Ago” finds his “wood withered on a stern” while pining, again, for the brothers Kray; and “Lester Bangs” brings Moz face-to-face with his angry, wordy critic-hero in ways sappy, nerdy, and sweet.
Maybe Make-Up is meant to deceive as it enhances—and so what? Maybe, as heard throughout “Kerching Kerching,” fame is a monster that searches, soothes, and destroys. Yes, we know that. We know that Morrissey knows that, too. And we know that Morrissey knows that we know that. So maybe he isn’t scaling the highest mountain with Make-Up Is a Lie. What Morrissey has done successfully, however, is jump back onto the snowiest hill with his hooks dug firmly into rock and planted a decent flag. Here’s hoping he can shut the fuck and just keep singing.
