Morrissey

THE M.E.N.ARENA, MANCHESTER

Saturday May 22, 2004

As an entrance, it’s unbeatable. A synth drone and a disembodied voice in the dark, in eerie helium-Scouse. A litany of Morrissey horrors from the decade he once dubbed the “19 Haties”: from the Royal Family and Stock, Aitken & Waterman to “gut-wrenching disappointment” and “racist” (“Imperfect List” by Big Hard Excellent Fish). Then he saunters on, Armani’d to the hilt and framed by 12ft-high Morrissey letters flashed in red Vegas bulbs, and launches into Sinatra’s “My Way”. It could just as easily be “All Of Me”. Or “I Believe”. As comebacks go, it makes Lazarus look lame.

To the facts. The man’s first hometown gig in 12 years. A 15,000-strong crowd that sold out in just over an hour. Back in the UK Top 10 for the first time in a decade with “Irish Blood, English Heart”. New album You Are The Quarry?his first since 1997?on the eve of topping the charts after years without a deal. Oh, and his 45th birthday. It doesn’t take a leap of romantic imagination to believe that all the tangled strands of Morrissey’s life finally come together on such a night. As ever, though, it’s not quite so straightforward.

For all his perceived victimisation?a siege mentality borne of 1992’s critical backlash, further entrenched in LA exile by collapsed record companies and bitter court cases?post-millennium Moz remains hard to love. There’s a preening narcissism, a touch of the precious, to the way he handles the adoration tonight. He’s evidently moved by the terrace chants, but there’s also a sense of the expected, too, like anything less just won’t do. We’re in superstar territory and he presumes you know it. There’s even a point near the close (straight after the gorgeous “I’m Not Sorry” from the new album, complete with depth-charge blips) where, the throng having failed to spontaneously erupt into “Happy Birthday”, he decides to mention it himself. When they do start up, the mock humility (“Who? ME?”) sums him up tonight: a big hunk o’ ’68 Elvis, a Johnnie Ray teardrop, a titter of Frankie Howerd.

Despite a midway sag?”Let Me Kiss You”, “Jack The Ripper” and Raymonde’s “No One Can Hold A Candle To You” indicate a workmanlike band rather than an inspired one?the show is extraordinary. Of the robust new weaponry, “First Of The Gang To Die” and “Irish Blood, English Heart” are the howitzers, especially the latter, with its sniping riposte to those who branded him a bigot after the notorious Union Jack incident at Madstock ’92. For the record, he does unfurl the flag tonight, but it’s an Irish tricolour. “How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel?” typifies the embattled approach, flexing with tartly mischievous wisdom. After a glorious “I Know it’s Gonna Happen Someday”, he offers: “I can’t believe I’m 29. Where did the years go? WHY did the years go?”

Of course, the great paradox of the stadium-busting Morrissey of ’04 is evident whenever he treads Smiths turf. There?and on early solo volleys circa “Everyday Is Like Sunday”, here prefixed by The New York Dolls’ “Subway Train”?he was writing for himself, but expressing the damp desire of an entire generation of teenage flotsam. Today it’s much the same, but how many can relate to the English-as-Eccles ex-pat in Carole Lombard’s Hollywood gaff, singing of gold discs, spiteful critics and custody of his millions? As inspired as You Are The Quarry may be, it’s often an exclusive experience.

“The Headmaster Ritual” is the first Smiths song he covers tonight. Truly stupendous it is, too, Boz Boorer picking out Marr’s circular arpeggios admirably. Morrissey gives a wry smile afterwards: “The past never dies.” The quasi-rockabilly of “Rubber Ring” swings neatly, “A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours” slaps hard and, by the time he finishes with “Shoplifters Of The World Unite”, there’s a discernible peeling back of the years. In contrast to the pristine-suited measure of his entrance, he’s now unbuttoned, tucked half-in, half-out and dripping with abandon.

Sidling back on for an encore of “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”, he nearly tears the roof off the sucker. “Thanks,” he says, for once sounding entirely natural. “You’ve made a happy man very old. Whatever happens now, please don’t forget me.”

The timing of this show is somewhat odd, coming as it does nearly a month before the release of Malin’s second album, The Heat. The audience doesn’t know the new songs and Jesse chides them for their reserve when he plays the unfamiliar material. He admits it’s his own fault, though. The album was meant to be out now, but was delayed when he added two extra tracks. So sensibly, for much of the night he concentrates on the gritty, streetwise vignettes from his much-acclaimed debut, The Fine Art Of Self Destruction.

Dressed in an ill-fitting bum-freezer jacket with an acoustic guitar slung round his neck, he gives us “Wendy” and “Downliner” in quick succession as his four-piece band (“from New York,” as he helpfully tells us) sets up a fine old racket behind him. By the time he gets to “Hotel Columbia”, a classic road song from the new album, the jacket is off and so is the shirt, as he strips down to sleeveless Springsteen-style singlet. A long preamble about his punk credentials seems to be going nowhere before he tells us that Neil Young is “the most fuckin’ punk rock person in the world” and launches into an improbable version of “Helpless”, which he dedicates to Tony Blair. He captures Neil’s distressed choirboy tone to perfection, but is soon back to a New York snarl on “Arrested” and the brilliant “Mona Lisa” from the new record.

He returns for an encore and delivers a potent acoustic “Solitaire” from Fine Art. He’s been complaining all night that we haven’t made enough noise and finally, to his obvious delight, most of the crowd joins in. Suitably encouraged, he concludes with a couple more everybody knows?Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” (recorded especially for Uncut, which raises a big cheer when he mentions it) and a stirring version of Costello’s “Oliver’s Army”. He needs to come back soon, when the songs on The Heat have permeated our consciousness, and he surely won’t find London quite so reticent.

American Music Club/Richmond Fontaine

QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL LONDON

Sunday May 23, 2004

Richmond Fontaine take to the stage looking like they’ve walked out of Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces. Led by Willy Vlautin, the kind of West Coast human tumbleweed usually found roaming bars and used bookstores from Tijuana to Seattle, sporting a US Army jacket and ripped jeans, a prized book of Raymond Carver stories tucked safely away in a dirty dufflebag, Richmond Fontaine make surging, impassioned American guitar music about life and how not to live it.

Tonight, they don’t put a foot wrong, underscoring the much deserved fuss over their latest, breakthrough album, Post To Wire, surely the best Americana discovery since Whiskeytown unveiled their blue zenith, Strangers Almanac.

As if we weren’t punch-drunk enough after Fontaine, next up are the newly reformed American Music Club, back after a 10-year hiatus. Any fears of hammy reunion syndrome are gone by the first glorious chorus of “Johnny Mathis’ Feet”, Mark Eitzel singing his heart out, flanked by ace dresser Vudi, one of the most underrated guitarists of the post-punk era, fellow original members Tim Mooney and Dan Pearson and new recruit Marc Capelle?a kind of theatrical, jittery Liberace-on-speed, handling keyboards and trumpet.

The superb songs premiered from the forthcoming new album are alternately beefy doomsday waltzes or hook-laden atmospheric offbeat pop nuggets projected against that trademark wall of sound. Of the oldies, there are many: “Gary’s Song”, “Nightwatchman”, “Firefly”, “Outside This Bar”, “If I Had A Hammer”, “Why Won’t You Stay?” and a furious, peaking “Sick Of Food”. Everybody knows by now that Mark Eitzel is one of the most gifted songwriters of his generation. Solo, he’s good. But with AMC, he really soars, the magic and the chemistry and the history giving him wings. Tonight wasn’t just a reunion show. It was all about Mark Eitzel going home. This band belongs together, as their stunning, incendiary set illustrated. For many of us, it was a homecoming, too, like seeing an old friend for the first time in a decade whose absence had left a gaping hole in our lives. After the show, all I could think was that the Pixies are going to have to leap through hoops to top this (see page 148). Welcome back, guys

Pixies

BRIXTON ACADEMY, LONDON

Thursday June 3 and Saturday June 5, 2004

All you really want to know is whether they were any good or not, right? Eleven years since they split up, hitting these shores on the back of a sell-out reunion tour, our expectations were almost unreasonably high. Do they pull it off? Hell, yes.

Uncut catches Boston’s finest on the second and, two days later, the final night of their four-date residency at Brixton Academy, and on both occasions they blow the roof off and tear the stars from the sky. They parachute in, play 25 songs, then fly out again 90 minutes later; no frills, no set to speak of, no polite between-song banter. They just race headlong through one of the most impressive and influential back catalogues rock music has ever produced, a trailblazing, eyeball-slicing mix of punk, snarling surf guitar, deviant dynamics and dark-as-fuck lyrics.

And anything other than a greatest hits set would have been a disappointment, if not downright rude. Certainly, everything you’d want is here?”Monkey Gone To Heaven”, “Gouge Away”, “Where Is My Mind?”, “Debaser”, “Wave Of Mutilation”, the list goes on?but seeing them on two different nights, it’s pretty striking how changes in the running order affect the emphasis of the material. So, on the Thursday, “Here Comes Your Man” arrives early in the evening, a neat, crowd-pleasing moment?but on Saturday, as part of the closing encore, it becomes a roaring, jubilant adieu.

The past 11 years have treated the band reasonably well. But, perhaps tellingly, there’s not much visible camaraderie between the four members; they keep their distance, rarely establishing any eye-contact. Black Francis looks a little heavier, Joey Santiago a little thinner on top, Dave Lovering almost resembles a travelling snake-oil salesman or a member of Neil Young’s road crew circa 1975 with his straggly long hair and goatee beard. Only Kim Deal seems to have escaped the passing of time unscathed. The bulk of the sets are drawn from the classic opening salvo of Come On Pilgrim/Surfer Rosa and Doolittle. As if acknowledging that their creative edge was dimming by the time they made Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde, they play only four songs from those last two albums on the nights Uncut sees them, most notably their ferocious Jesus & Mary Chain cover “Head On”, which opens the Saturday show.

Apart from Thursday’s slow-build reworking of “Nimrod’s Son”, which sounds like it was intended for the soundtrack of a Vincent Gallo movie, there are no great changes from the songs as they appear on record. Everything is swathed in white noise, Frank’s trademark howl wrenched from the deepest recesses of his soul, only Kim’s honey-dripping harmonies providing any light here. Everything burns, pretty much.

Some may find Francis’ “We’re only in it for the money” admittances grating?particularly when you realise, on top of the