The Smiths have always polarised people. There are few bands so capable of inducing such deathless worship or such splenetic vitriol within normally sane and reasonable people. Ever since I first heard the Smiths I have been a big fan, but even I will admit to being unreasonably wound up by numerous things about the band. First of all, Morrissey’s ineffable smugness and glib arrogance has always irritated me, which is only made worse by the sickening cult of personality the man has built around himself. I have never forgiven the man for firing Johnny Marr, one of the greatest guitarists pop music has ever seen, or ruining perfectly decent Vini Reilly backing tracks on his lack-lustre first solo album. I also take issue with the fact that many people seem to see The Smiths as the only 80’s indie band that really mattered, the only musically worthwhile band in a sea of twee effete anorak music with no ambition. “The Smiths saved music in the 80’s. They were the first band to really do that kind of thing.” Well, no and no. It’s my personal opinion that Felt, Orange Juice and The Go-Betweens for starters beat The Smiths at their own game musically and lyrically, the main difference being that these other bands eventually had the courage to confront their insecurities rather then making a career by dancing around them. Nevertheless, The Smiths’ music means an awful lot to me. The fact that The Smiths create such strong emotions in people means that it is impossible to listen to them without context, but this is exactly what I have tried to do: to put aside my prejudices and preconceptions, listen to all of The Smiths’ music with fresh ears, and try to figure out exactly how good Everyone’s Favourite Indie Band ™ is. Unfortunately, I was never able to see The Smiths live, so I am going to have to go on their four studio albums, along with the legendary radio sessions and singles compilation ‘Hatful Of Hollow’ and loose ends compilation ‘Louder Than Bombs’, which between them capture all the important stray singles and B-sides. This perhaps gives a flawed view of the band, as many people claim that The Smiths never captured on record fully the power they were capable of generating as a live act, but unfortunately the recorded albums are all that is left to history. I haven’t taken into account the flawed live document ‘Rank’, as it is said not to do the live band justice. Plus I’m not made of time and money. So, her we go. Are The Smiths over-rated, or am I just an obscurist snob with an unreasonable axe to grind? Read on….
The Smiths
This has always been my favourite Smiths album, and I still think it’s great. People often complain about the muddy production, but I like it, the instruments actually sound like real instruments, instead of having that 80’s sheen that their later work was often plagued by. It also includes most of my favourite Smiths songs. ‘Suffer Little Children’ manages to be both menacing and sympathetic; ‘Hand That Rocks The Cradle’ is just plain nasty. The dream-like guitar coda to ‘Pretty Girls Make Graves’ is my favourite part of any Smiths song ever. ‘Reel Around The Fountain’ and ‘This Charming Man’ and others are all deservedly Smiths classics, and the version of ‘Still Ill’, one of their finest songs, is leaps and bounds ahead of the ‘Hatful’ version. On the downside, it does have ‘Miserable Lie’, which mutates from a pretty introduction into one of the WORST songs EVER. Seriously, I have to skip this song every time I listen to the album, and I can’t even be bothered to skip ‘Yellow Submarine’. Other than that unfortunate song, a deathless classic, deserving of its status.
Hatful of Hollow
It’s hard to deny that this is pretty amazing, even though I’d quite like to. This album marks the beginning of the poor production that dogged the Smiths throughout their career, noticeable especially on a weaker ‘Still Ill’. However, most of the songs here are excellent. ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’ is one of my favourite Smiths songs, it is so beautifully concise and elegant, and the guitar playing really is Marr at his stellar best. ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’, ‘Handsome Devil’ and ‘Girl Afraid’ are all deserving of their reputation in The Smiths cannon. And of course, there is the legendary ‘How Soon Is Now?’. Many people rate this as the Smiths’ best song, and it’s very nice, but I can’t understand the esteem in which it’s held. Morrissey’s lyrics have always been a large part of The Smiths, and, with his ability to write witty and literate lyrics that operate in the context of a normal pop song, it’s easy to see why. But ‘How Soon Is Now?’ is Morrissey at his most direct, and as a result the song lacks the lyrical complexity that makes, say, ‘This Charming Man’ so great. The song is musically reasonably impressive, with The Smiths’ under-rated rhythm section showing great versatility, and Johnny Marr’s Bo-Diddley-in-space guitar playing is pretty cool, but I just don’t like it as much as the fluid arpeggios of, say, ‘Still Ill’. People also swear by ‘Please Please Please, Let Me Get What I Want’, but I’ve never liked it. Listening to it anew, however, I am impressed by its fluid tunefulness and Morrissey’s self-deprecating wit, which is something I never thought I’d say. But ‘Back To The Old House’ is just boring. Still, though, mostly classics despite the iffy production. Another really good album.
Meat Is Murder
A mixed bag, this. ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ is Smiths at their glorious best, driving rhythms and fantastic playing from Marr, with genuinely humorous lyrics. ‘What She Said’ is another favourite of mine, and a fine example of what made this band so great – Mozza’s gleefully morbid witticisms set against Marr’s fantastically unconventional guitar playing. ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ is perhaps the band’s finest song, with it’s jangling chords, backwards guitar coda and more playful morbidity from Moz at his bleak best. ‘Well I Wonder’ is a beautiful, delicate ballad with Morrissey’s improved falsetto stealing the show on a genuinely affecting song. These songs rank among the group’s best and most under-rated work. However, the best thing about the otherwise average ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ is its fantastic title, and ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’ is kind of cute but isn’t going anywhere special. I almost feel guilty about liking the decidedly silly ‘Nowhere Fast’, but it does contain the line ‘The poor and the needy / Are selfish and greedy’. ‘Barbarism Begins At Home’ is an ambitious attempt at funk that nearly works but doesn’t quite, and the infamous title track comes over as melodramatic and daft, which is a shame as it is nearly saved by Marr’s dark arrangements. Nearly. The CD reissue and the original American release contain ‘How Soon Is Now?’ stuck randomly in the middle of the album, where it kind of disrupts the flow, making for an odd and disjointed listen. A flawed album, but one with many gems to recommend it.
The Queen Is Dead
The ‘masterpiece’. I still prefer the debut, but this is a brilliant album nonetheless. The title track is a jagged, powerful monster with Morrissey at the peak of his powers, dripping both wit and vitriol aplenty. You really shouldn’t like ‘Frankly Mr Shankly’, but, daft as it is, it’s almost impossible not to be charmed by it. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ and ‘I Know It’s Over’ are genuinely moving and affecting, perfect examples of the music’s emotional content backing up Morrissey’s posturing. ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ is fantastic, with fine instrumental work by Marr in the break. ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Then Others’ is magical, with Marr’s nocturnal guitar riffs seeing the album out in style. However, the stalker anthem ‘Never Had No One Ever’, whilst good, is not up there with the rest of the album’s classics, and ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ changes from being charming to being annoying depending on your mood. ‘Vicar In A Tutu’ is absolutely dreadful, though. Morrissey’s lyrics are amusing enough but for some reason Marr opts for a skinny rockabilly strut that doesn’t come off at all. And the production has gotten worse, too, with the gated reverb on the drums annoyingly prominent and Marr’s guitar sounding very plastic-y and not at all life-like. Still, a great album that, for the most part, deserves its reputation.
Strangeways, Here We Come
Oh dear. I really don’t like this album, so it was interesting listening to it all the way through, something I hadn’t done in years. This is The Smiths’ worst-produced album, with Marr’s guitar sapped of much of its life and over-fussy orchestration drowning most of the songs. ‘A Rush And A Push’ and ‘Stop Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before’ are up there with The Smiths’ best – well, apart from the lousy guitar solo at the end of ‘Stop Me..’ – but elsewhere, this album has some of the worst songs the band ever committed to tape. Title aside, ‘I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish’ wouldn’t have been up to much anyway, but the dreadful synthesised brass stabs make it something of a disaster. ‘Death of a Disco Dancer’ is musically and lyrically shockingly uninspired. They really suffered when they fired Andy Rouke – you can hardly hear the bass lines on this album at all, compare them to ‘This Charming Man’ and the way the bass riff drives the song. ‘Unhappy Birthday’, ‘Paint A Vulgar Picture’ and ‘Death At One’s Elbow’ are absolutely awful, the latter rivalling ‘Miserable Lie’ for title of worst ever Smiths track. Which leads us to the two most iconic – and problematic – tracks on the album, ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’ and ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me’. ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’ is a tasteless little song about wife-beating. The Smiths had always intentionally courted controversy, from the days of ‘Suffer Little Children’ on, but, whereas ‘Suffer Little Children’, ‘Hand That Rocks The Cradle’ or even ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ all deal with tasteless issues, they subtly broke taboos in order to look at morally complex and dubious issues from an interesting view point. ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’, by comparison, is both blunt and smug, and has very little to say. Perhaps even more worrying is the prosaic and simple chords that Marr uses, worlds away from his trademark jazzy complexity. ‘Last Night…’ is meant to be a bleak and emotionally affecting song in he vein of ‘I Know It’s Over’ or ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’, but, unlike those songs, ‘Last Night…’ is musically and lyrically insipid, lacking the exciting arrangements and cutting wit that made the other songs so thrilling, with Mozza reduced to singing about his own repetition. In fact, for ‘Strangeways’, the Smiths had accidentally become the repetitive dealers in stereotyped adolescent misery that their detractors had always made them out to be, increasingly frustrating for the fact that that is precisely what they had never been. Marr is increasingly off form, succumbing to playing horrifically clichéd rock guitar solos on ‘Paint A Vulgar Picture’ and opening ‘I Started Something’ with blasé crunching rock chords. In many ways, ‘Strangeways’ sets the template for Morrissey’s later solo albums, with the Moz crooning increasingly clichéd lyrics that stray ever closer to self parody over insipid pub-rock backings. To all intents and purposes, The Smiths were finished. ‘Strangeways’ really does sound like the end.
Louder Than Bombs
A compilation of singles and B-sides, and therefore by its nature somewhat erratic. Much is made of The Smiths’ ability to write great non-album tracks, and indeed there is much to love here, from the glam-stomp of ‘Panic’ to ‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet Baby’ and the twinkling guitar arpeggios on ‘Half A Person’. Any song that starts ‘Call me morbid, call me pale / I’ve spent six years on your trail’ is going in the right direction. I’ve always liked ‘Shop Lifters Of The World Unite’, despite its horrible Queen-aping guitar solo; it’s probably the closest the band ever came to following up in the style of ‘How Soon Is Now?’, But I’ve always really hated ‘Ask’. The punk guitar of ‘London’ sounds very un-Smiths-like, almost closer to early Wedding Present, and I’m not sure it really works. ‘Sheila Take A Bow’, ‘Rubber Ring’ and ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ are all good solid Smiths singles, but no one really needs to listen to ‘Oscillate Wildly’ or ‘Golden Lights’. ‘Unloveable’ is pretty good though, especially the unexpected guitar riffing at the end, and ‘Asleep’ is quite tragically beautiful. There is a frustrating overlap with ‘Hatful of Hollow’, and as a listening experience, it doesn’t flow very well at all. But there is still an indecent amount of magic on display here amongst the filler.
Conclusion, or, What Difference Does It Make?
So, what have I learned from this experience? The Smiths produced two great albums, one very good album, a great compilation, a pretty good compilation and one pretty poor album. It is of course impossible to remove the context from the listening experience, and I was kind of surprised by the strength of the emotional connection I have with this music, especially ‘The Smiths’ and ‘Hatful’ material. And I have to say I was impressed once more, for the most part, on the incredible quality of the Morrissey-Marr song-writing partnership. Are The Smiths over-rated? A little, yes. Their output is certainly flawed, but when the band were on form – which, ‘Strangeways’ aside, I think they were more often then not – they certainly had something special. Much of the resentment I feel towards them comes, of course, from the betrayal I felt at listening to Morrissey’s solo material and finding it so lacking, but of course, it is worth remembering that our heroes are but human, something Mozza himself would do well to remember from time to time. The Smiths were not as original or groundbreaking as people like to pretend, and I still feel they owe a debt to Orange Juice – compare the lyrics of ‘Pretty Girls Make Graves’ with those of OJ’s ‘Simply Thrilled Honey’ for starters – and Felt, perhaps most of all to Lawrence’s inability to sell records and hence pose a threat to them. And unfortunately for the perpetual outsider in me, The Smiths’ influence has been co-opted by generations of indie-rockers from Oasis to The Libertines, whose gauche ladism and retro pub-rock bears no resemblance to The Smiths’ musical and lyrical vision. I started this article with the intention to bury The Smiths rather than to praise them. But despite the grudges I bear them, I cannot deny my love for The Smiths. And here, I think, we come to the rub, why some people have a deathless love for this band and others hate them. If you discovered them at the right time, these songs became the songs that made you cry, the songs that saved your life, and as Morrissey points out, we cannot forget them. Such cultish adulation is, of course, utterly sickening and off-putting when viewed from the outside. Removing the context becomes, at the end of the day, utterly impossible. The Smiths have been the soundtrack to some of the best and worst times of my life, and I can’t really take that away from them.
