...
'Home Is A Question Mark' was the first song on the new record that captured me. Lovely song, great opening line, Etc, and then he got to 'I dunno' and my heart cracks a little. It was the first lyric that gripped on 'LiHS' and felt impassioned to me and, now, the living, breathing, in-the-finely-tailored-flesh version confirms my belief then. And í knew that 'I dunno' would get me to-night, and it did; the soaring, questioning chorus undercut/answered so eloquently by that cute colloquialism. He shifts and shrinks and softens his tone from 'Home / is it just a word?' for the immense and devastating, to me, 'SAVED MYSELF?' climax. And 'If I ever get there / would you meet me / Wrap your legs around my face just to greet me?' is an even greater line, live: funny, shocking, lovely, loving, a little bit icky, but wouldn't you love to ask it just once of somebody? Even if they left you soon after, it would be worth it...
'My Love, I'd Do Anything For You' is another rousing rendition of the album opener, which, again, for me, fails to develop beyond the heights of the recorded version. But again, love the falsetto.
'The Bullfighter Dies' follows, but is too short for a gin run. For any Kensington Gore hounds missing 'Meat is Murder' you will be happy to see somebody being given an uppercut stabbing by a bull's horn. Hooray!
Another B-side surprise 'If You Don't Like Me, Don't Look At Me'. Did í need this? Was í waiting all these years for this to come along? Not really. í needed 'Christian Dior'. í was waiting for 'Sweetie Pie'. But it was actually lovely enough, for a Wednesday night in Kensington.
'Back On The Chain Gang' is a charming rendition of a charming song. Not alot more to add, other than í recall thinking that it was clearly a version delivered with all the care one would imagine of a loving friend of the person who wrote it.
Did í think that í really needed to hear another live rendition of 'World Peace Is None Of Your Business' after the last perfectly fine tour? Not especially. But í was wrong. It is still a fine soaring Morrissey vocal and Jesse killed the guitar solo (in a good way).
On 'Hold On To Your Friends' Morrissey delivers a gorgeous, deep blue velvet vocal to-night, again displaying the control í've talked of; switching from the soaring upper register of his range on 'World Peace..' down to the smoother sonorances of this classic. And í don't mean to tread on Jamie's toes here, but í did suddenly miss Alain terribly on this song.
A 'Morr-i-see' chant staggers up from the terraces behind me at this point, which gets a cheer of its own (!), before being taken up briefly by the room.
The room (and every room, if the world were just) then rises as 'Everyday Is Like Sunday' hoves into view, with a soft brown Blackpool b&b shagpile of a vocal, following the tease of Gustavo's extended piano intro from 'In Your Lap'. Boz and Moz were in on-going discussion during this about something or other, before Moz took up an odd semi-prone pose, braced well, propped and primed on the drum riser. íf í were a yoga man, í would imagine it is called something like 'The Swan's Scream". Which they should have done, such is the beauty of this song to-night. When í end up a cancerous wreck, í will recall the sound of a massed Kensington singing along to the chorus AND I WILL WEEP WITH JOY.
At the climax Moz is stage left as a beaming boy runs down from the terraces (my 2002 spot, co-incidentally) and stretches across the speaker, just enough to touch the hand. The crowd cheer, and the boy is a combustion of joy as he bounces back to his seat, where a girl hugs him wildly: Momentous Permanence.
Morrissey reacts to this by singing 'Oscar Wilde...Oscar Wilde...Oscar Wilde' as the closing refrain. The crowd cheer the name.
Perhaps he was summoning something, because then...
We come to the song that, this time out, Morrissey has chosen to be, what í have previously called, the dark jewel at the heart of the set. In past campaigns it has been 'I Know it's Over', 'Asleep', 'Moon River', 'Life is a Pigsty', Etc. To-night it is 'Jack the Ripper'.
í loved this song when it was just a pallid loitering slip of a thing on a B-side, and í've loved it as it, and í, have grown in heft & years. That central guitar figure by Boz is god-sent, and if Jesse had just played that for 5 minutes í would be moist. The guitar line alone 'speaks' to me of beauty and hope soaring, but denied denied denied. Something about that descension will forever kill me. But then Morrissey graces that guitar with one of his darkest lyrics ~ a love song to batter thy heart. A song of violence and denial, a song of the dark hidden corners of love, of not knowing what's good for you and loving it. And of always crashing in the same arms, yet not caring. Love as a threat, a promise and a final request. This night he sings it with a fierce and abandoned intensity rarely witnessed ~ from soaring to sneering to crooning to lullaby. Never have insults, insights and incites been so lovingingly thrown. During Jesse's screaming guitar solo Morrissey can just be heard resurrecting the ha-ha-hahs from 'Bigmouth..', lost and gone, gone.
As the song builds, all the while, Morrissey proceeds to roll up each of his shirt sleeves. Slowly. Now, í don't remember this happening when Tony Blair used to do it, but to-night this turns out to be the single most Erotic thing that í have ever witnessed. Obviously...obviously?...it was the context wot did it. But if í had ovaries they would have popped, if í had balls they would have retreated from whence they came. His naked arms conduct the darkness around him, raised heavenwards, spread canyon wide, flailing and downcast, and straining out toward us ~ threatening then beckoning.
All this is in the midst of a sublime, scarlet chiaroscuro light show that has Morrissey's face half in red half in black, flickering back and forth, shredding through the dry-ice vapour. The whole mis-en-scéne is of a hellish inferno, sheathed in smoke, blood red light strafing the darkness, all watched over by an image of a bloodied and shackled man, being led to incarceration, apparently at ease with his fate, cigarette dangling from swollen lips.
You cannot look away from the stage, and yet this is a passion that you wouldn't necessarily want any part of. A tale of murderous desire, possibly taken too literally. It's a rendition that in some territories could be illegal. Novelists would kill their kin to get such power in 700 pages, film-makers in a box set of their best efforts, playwrites in a dozen West End sell-out runs.
NOBODY ELSE DOES THIS.
From the sublime to...'Spent The Day In Bed'. Pop-tastic though. Still. A palette cleanser perhaps, prior to 'Speedway'. It's not as magnificent as the 2011 live version, but delivered with a skillful, prowling, seething sensuousness, bathed in a crepuscular emerald. And my sodden heart skipped at the Orbison a cappela. In the manner of a chapel indeed.
'How Soon is Now' is another song that í could easily let slide. í know that it's a 'classic', but so is...'Little Man, What Now?'. To me. Having said all that, this was a quite excellent version, better than the last few tours, which were just noise-fests to me. And í have been present when Moz may have been said to be faxing it in a tad, but this vocal seemed to me to be alive and engaged (perhaps drawing inspiration from t.A.T.u's interpretation). í enjoyed the addition of 'í am (still) the son and heir' in the 2nd verse, which í read as still, since the 1st verse. As opposed to 1985. í enjoyed the articulacy of his yelps of 'No! No!..Yes! Yes!' beneath the guitar bed. And in the club going verse, í enjoyed the vocal disintegrating into dribbling gibberish (but that may be influenced by it happening 6 feet in front of me).
And while it may have been The Chemicals, but the Wah-Wah was particularly Wah-Wah to-night. The phasing & volume & intensity was such that í began to go a bit Wah-Wah myself ~ like the aural equivalent of a strobing fit.
What was truly special though was that following Matt's crashing ending there came one of 'those' moments that you get at concerts once in a long while. And it was just a moment: We clapped wildly, Moz thanked us,
and then something else entered the room. We all clapped louder and roared more, but it was more than mere volume. A sudden wave of...something (love, if you wish, but it seems reductive to put a word on it) washed through the Hall, and on to the stage. Everybody felt it, hence the queer double cheer. Moz felt it, smiled a smile that í won't try to describe, and offered a second, quiet 'Thank You'. Less than ten seconds, maybe. But forever, definitely.
From the sublime to...'Who Will Protect Us From The Police?' It is the only meh song on the new album for me. í get the whole tripartite patriarchy structure of daddy, police, god. But that's just about all that í get. Not a total duffer, just...really? Live version is not improved by the crap cop videos.
And then a delightful surprise ~ 'I'm Not Sorry' ~ always one of my beloved songs from 'You are the Quarry'. There is beauty in every runt. And the delight isn't only in the surprise, as this re-tooled version with Jesse on a poignant and plaintive slide guitar is wonderfully done. Morrissey inhabits and elaborates upon one of his more low-key, dolorous vocal shadings (an altogether other colour and intent from the mirror image brightness of the 'i'm so sorry' chorus of 'Suedehead' only an hour ago). It's the oddly insistent subtlety of his style that captivates, quietly but firmly un-apologetic.
The amiably conversational tone is wonderously underscored to-night as he wanders across stage right, and instead of going into 'the woman of my dreams', he begins to shake the hands of some people who have rushed down the terraces to the speaker's edge, about 6 feet from me, and begins to sing 'And hello..to you.. and to you..well hellooo..he-llo', and still in melody, 'yes..well.. that's very nice..thank you' Etc. It is a quiet gem of a moment.
The song climaxes with something that í never knew that í actually needed ~ a slide guitar/flute finalé. Superb.
After a brief interlude, Morrissey & band take their bow with 'Irish Blood, English Heart'. í have heard enough renditions of this song to last a lifetime (í mean that as a complement) so, while í would rather have a dozen other closers, it is a thunderous climax, done perfectly. It seems churlish to resist. And what a ripping good tosser Morrissey undoubtedly is.
It also takes me back to the first time that í ever saw Morrissey perform the song, at that first night here, over 15 years ago, and all that time has wished upon us since then.
Before the final song, Morrissey's final words of advice to us are ~ "As always...be kind to yourself... be kind to animals...and look after your Mother." The 2nd seems as natural to me as the 1st seems un-natural; an enduring problem, as well as a problem endured. And the 3rd is now moot, as my own died last summer; not passed away or over or on. Died. í looked after her until the very end, and í was ready to look after her for years yet. But the human mind can be an awesome thing; in its beauty and its horror. The horror of a mind FORGETTING HOW TO TELL YOUR BODY TO BREATHE. Imagine that. She died in her own home, with the two people that she fought to give life to, and loved most in this world, fighting to give life back to her. As the black night bled out the blue of a new day, and the sparrows sang their nervous little chorus, my Mother went to her great reward.
And so, The Palladium expects...
.
