Ion’s blog

Blessed be the poets in the old days

When the field was still wide open. The arts

Are all fenced in now, the field parceled out,

And we, the latecomers, scratched from the race

No room to bring up a new-yoked chariot.

His new album, “You Are the Quarry” (Sanctuary), demonstrates more than ever that the best lyricist in rock, Morrissey, still surrounds himself with dull musicians incapable of properly filling out his introspective kitchen-sink dramas. Plodding generic rock ‘n’ roll accompanies “Where taxi drivers never stop talking, under slate-gray Victorian sky: Here you’ll find despair and I.” At this level of lyric artistry, these warmed-over arena rock backdrops are a waste. One longs to lock him up for a year with, say, the pop orchestra the High Llamas, so lyrics like “I’ve been dreaming of a time when to be English is not to be baneful, to be standing by the flag not feeling shameful, racist or martial” can be matched by equally thoughtful arrangements.

”It’s so tedious that everyone must be defined,” Morrissey told me when I broached the subject of his sexuality weeks earlier. ”And if you pull away, why is it always assumed that you have a lurking dark secret that you’re hiding in a wine cellar? All of us, ultimately, we’re not that interesting, when it comes down to it. What do we all do? We read a bit. We listen to a bit of classical music. We like one or two stage actors. There’s not really any unreachable depths. So perhaps the less people know, the better.”