Am I the only the only one not entirely thrilled? I mean, don't get me wrong, i think ROTT is fine and dandy, but I hope that just because Visconti is producing again doesn't mean that the sound will be in the same vain, because the overall sound of the record was my biggest problem with it.
I would love for him to brink back Jerry Finn or Steve Lillywhite, but I suppose those days have passed.
It's interesting, isn't it? Everyone seems to be pretty pleased with the news, yet if you ask most sensible people what they think of
ROTT, they'll probably tell you it's average at best.
For me, the problem with
Ringleader was that the content failed to live up to the premise; that this would be a romantic records with lush, musical arrangements set against the inspirational backdrop of Rome, with Morrissey devoting a labour of love to one of his favourite producers and producing some truly original, heart-wrenching lyrics set to epic orchestrations and bombastic Italian rock. Alas, what we got was much different, much less, with only occasional lashings of the above (
Dear God,
Pigsty).
Part of me feels guilty saying these things, since believe it or not I do actually enjoy the record. However, I hope that the criticisms made of the record, which are fairly consistent across the board, impress some effect on how the next one is recorded and produced. I think this new album needs to be far lyrically stronger, with Morrissey moving away from the mostly autobiographical content of Ringleader which I feel hampered the strength of the song-writing on that album. Of course, I still want to hear personal lyrics and songwriting, but with less of a 'coming out' tone to what
Ringleader had.
Musically, I'm not entirely sure. Ringleader contained some glam-rock leanings with some orchestrated moments, and I don't necessarily think that a continuation of that would be a bad thing. I'm all for a more gentler sound; a combination of acoustic/orchestrated pieces would be wonderful in my opinion.
