A well-written, interesting and balanced review.
www.northernsoul.me.uk/album-review-i-am-not-a-dog-on-a-chain-morrissey/
www.northernsoul.me.uk/album-review-i-am-not-a-dog-on-a-chain-morrissey/
- 'his finest work in a long generation'
- 'It’s no longer in the words these days, for instance, where the window on Morrissey’s soul can really be found, but in the voice.'
- 'If there’s a catchier collection of tunes in the Morrissey catalogue then it’s long since been deleted from the popular playlist. Let’s not shrink from this – there’s scarcely a dud to be found among this eclectic 11-strong suit'
- 'Back in the mists of time it was the rolling chords from Johnny Marr’s fiendishly detuned guitars which allowed the young singer to extemporise on a canvas unlike any in popular music. Now, in having him throw his arms around a synthesiser, producer Chiccarelli and writing partner Jessie Tobias suggest credible, belated reinvention and a potential lifeline in the waters presently engulfing the Morrissey shipwreck. The indifferent bleep and the Mozzer croon bowl along quite handsomely, funnily enough, and in tossing out so many of the old gestures – the ersatz machismo of his regular minstrel players – the new idea of a kind of enlightened Left Banke chanteur is given a leg up.'
- 'If you sing your heart out on national television with the insignia of the far right pinned to your lapel then you broadcast a message which every sensible-thinking citizen will see as their duty to throw back in your face. If you lack the perspective to see that there is a war taking place across the globe between tolerance and hatred and that there is no room in that landscape for your faux patriotism and pick-and-mix prejudices then you deserve a picket line under your chin, a record-pyre at your local sports ground, and you can take your ten-dollar trumpet and stick it sideways where the sun once shone – irrespective of the nuances of your position.'
- 'The singer refuses to leave the stage, unbent and unbowed he would have you believe, though with the pridefully wakened passions of a man singing for his life.'