1991 04 Morrissey "Kill Uncle" Select review

VIVA DRAMA

MORRISSEY

Kill Uncle
HMV CSD 3789/MC/CD

THERE'S TOO much accompanying luggage with this record. The last two-and-a-half years (since 'Viva Hate’) have been loaded with irrelevancies, Mozz-trivia, and they cloud the issue. The issue being, in case anyone's forgotten, whether or not Morrissey can still cut the mustard, whether his music is still worth our attention.

He can, it is. 'Kill Unde' is an LP of tiny, shining moments that gradually dawn on the listener, in the same way a damp patch on a car seat only lets the extent of its presence known halfway through the journey (forgive the unattractive image).

Morrissey's collaborator for all but two of the songs on 'Kill Uncle' is Mark E Nevin, of Fairground Attraction infamy, and mostly the union is a happy one.

‘Our Frank' opens the album on a bright, hard, high note, the music rolling along happily and conventionally enough (guitars, drums, keyboards) until the stormer of a chorus breaks in: "Give us a drink/ And make it quick/Or else I'm gonna be sick...all over/Your frankly vulgar/Red pullover". Anyone who can make a chorus out of those lines deserves to be fanned with palm leaves one hour every day.

In terms of lyrical content, ‘Kill Uncle' cannot be faulted. One of the things that occasionally grated about Morrissey in the past was his apparent dependence on one, subtly-varied theme; his own imagined unlovableness. He seemed to be perpetuating the adolescent misery we all feel at one time or another and milking it for several pints more than it was worth.

He's getting over it. From 'King Leer': "I tried to surprise you/I lay down beside you/And...nothing much happened". He's playing it largely for laughs now, it seems (and what comic timing!) and the people who live to see him suffer out loud may soon have to move on. There's still a sadness, but it's mostly intimated rather than engraved on his skin.

Despite the catchy savagery of the title, ‘Kill Uncle' is a pleased and pleasing work. Even the most delicately-paced, most morbid songs (‘(I'm) The End Of The Family Line' and 'There Is A Place In Hell For Me And My Friends') win through because of their flagrant melodies and determinedly resigned lyrics.

'Asian Rut' and 'Found Found Found' are perhaps the exceptions; they're the weakest songs here, self-consciously funereal and heavy-handed respectively.

'Mute Witness' may well be the album's centrepiece. God only knows what it's about, but the seduction of a glorious tune and Morrissey's voice is enough to keep you wondering. Dramatic,
possessing a fine sense of cause-and-effect dynamics and, of course, melancholic as hell, its only problem is that it ends too soon.

That's the album's only problem. It all ends too soon. A success though, dammit, a success.

■ ■■■□ GRAHAM LINEHAN