what'stheworld?
New Member
Years of Refusal - it has the brilliant I'm Ok by Myself on there, as well as Squeezing my Skull, and only one song I skip (You were good in your time).
Ringleader for me...
Moz f***s off to Rome, gets bummed, loses his guilty Catholic self-persecution complex (perverse in itself in Rome) and releases an album unlike any other in his canon. With his best ever singing on it. ABout as experimental as Morrissey will get.
Quarry, by a considerable margin. Perhaps his second-best album, overall. Years of Refusal is reasonably close to the same territory, while Ringleader is way below the level of those two in my opinion. I find it hard to compare Swords, among other things because I have not listened to it nearly enough.
cheers
Ringleader. The most mature album, and the most cohesive album. It demands you listen to the whole thing.
Quarry is four good singles and a lot of filler, and Refusal is a few truly great moments, but more that are average.
I find it fascinating that people experience Ringleader so differently. I can see the presence of things that people who like it emphasise (cohesive, well-produced, mature, wholeness etc). I agree with it. It works best as a whole. It takes longer getting into. It sounds good. He sings well. But I just don't see how any of that compensates for the virtual absence of good songs on it. I've listened to it for years, to the point where I grew to appreciate it - but when all's said and done, it has no great songs, maybe two or three that are good and the remainder requires a good amount of tolerance to appreciate. "The lyrics and the chorus are shite, but the verse is quite good". "I like the way he sings towards the end there, pity about the melody". Both Quarry and Refusal (and every other Morrissey album for that matter) have filler, but Ringleader consists as far as I can see of almost nothing else, and the fact that they are enhanced by the whole they form a part of doesn't go very far to compensate for that. It doesn't help very much how well-produced "I just want to see the boy happy" is, or how mature, or how well it fits into a whole - it's still a weak song, with an essentially unappreciable melody. You can't construct a good whole out of weak parts, as already Kill Uncle (the only album I like less than Ringleader) showed. Heck, even Maladjusted and Southpaw, with their copious amount of filler, are better albums than Ringleader as far as I'm concerned - they at least each have two or three songs that rank among the best Morrissey has done. I'll take that over cohesive mediocrity any day.
cheers
Quarry has generally superior songs but Ringleader edges it because it works very, very well as an album.
This.
Can we put a stop to people doing this please? It's just pointless & adds nothing.