Smiths "Rank" NME review

BALLROOM BLITZ

THE SMITHS

Rank (Rough Trade LP/ Cassette/CD)

"Elvis Presley leant down from the sky and whispered to me 'Morrissey's the name of my latest flame'... "
Kenneth Williams in conversation with Ron Atkinson, Old Trafford, Oct 86

OH THE aggression, the aggression. And you never thought they were such rockers. A Noddy Holder style 'Hello' roars from amidst the heart of Prokofiev's 'March Of The Capulets', Mike Joyce's drums run off the stage with 'The Queen Is Dead' and, before you can gasp "Bernard Breslaw", Morrissey is willing us through his harvest festival of hurt and anti-social surrealism, and Johnny is stomping up and down on his Marr Wah Pedal like it's a portable tyre pump.

'The Queen Is Dead' is chased immediately by the guitar spangled 'Panic' which hurries through every rotten alleyway of this spoiled Isle touching and affecting as it goes. Winning hearts and everlasting love from the children of Carlisle, Dundee, and Leeds. Which in turn has its toes danced upon by 'Vicar In A Tutu', that camp little play about the privacy, pain, and rights of the practising individual.

There are those who say reviewing 'Rank', The Smiths' Live LP, is as simple as having to deal with a sanitised gig in the comfort of your own bedroom. Not so, my dears. You sit and see no twisting shirtless chest and haircut before your eyes, yet feel it all in the mind and the soul. You sense tongues rolling 'R's into your ear and, strangely, your temporary blindness allows you to see just that little bit more than those in The Kilburn National Ballroom in October, 1986 managed. Hindsight and Blindsight is quite a formidable partnership and yet The Smiths are so powerful and Morrissey such an enigma that even your new found vision leaves you little more than fumbling. So now you know how Beethoven felt when he first heard 'Bigmouth Strikes Again'.

With 'Ask' poured like yoghurt from above over the more substantial opening tracks, and then the popular mongrelisation of'His Latest Flame' and 'Rusholme Ruffians', 'Rank' takes a rest from it's frantic rock out before being curtailed with the glorious twang of Marr's lead in 'The Boy With The Thorn In His Side', that's as sticky, shiny and obstinate as a half sucked sweet, and the golden aggro of 'What She Said'. Side One is bitten to an end, and already 'Rank' is inviting as much comment as any other Smiths LP.

Is 'The Queen Is Dead' autobiographical, and how come Morrissey's emotional outpourings really sound better when beaten black and blue by Johnny's (almost hammy) glam rock riffs? The whammy fanfare into 'What She Said' is as majestic as it is colossal, yet Morrissey defuses pomposity by sticking his tongue between his lips and roaring in his best Iggy growl, 'Yeahrrr!'.

'Cemetry Gates' has always been one of the most descriptive Smiths songs so when pressed between the sticks 'n' stones tale of 'Is It Really So Strange', that opens Side Two, and the sheer volume of guitar and aggresion on 'London', it sets a pattern of passion amidst power that continues through the rest of the set. That year's Festive Fifty topper 'I Know It's Over' has it's freshly dug sentiment firmly pressed beneath the sod by Johnny Marr's 'The Draize Train' and 'Still Ill' asks that beautiful but tortuous question; "Does the body rule the mind?/Or does the mind rule the body?" before having it's rear and its lovely rolled arrgh's snapped at by the smashing jaws of 'Bigmouth'.

Whereas Side One sent pantomime and poetry scuttling around the feet of it's own pop brilliance. Side Two - and in particular 'I Know It's Over' and 'Bigmouth' - must have had the bitter lemmings reaching for their hankies and Ray-Bans in a combined thrill of exhilaration and desperation, and a communal experiencing of delicacy on a mass scale.

More than anything 'Rank' characterises the way The Smiths' songs talked to their listeners rather than merely - stringing together Radio 1 speak for them. The music has personality and temperament; Andy Rourke's bass on 'I Know It's Over' ebbs into the song like water against a bank. Marr's frequent guitar explosions (above Craig Gannon's rhythms) and Morrissey's raw snarled passions and pouting asides ARE The Smiths and the two together were the lifeline that drew a million shut-eyed paranoid claustrophobics out of their bedsit cemeteries and together. As proof there is a freshness to the delight and cheers that erupt after each song has finished.

No other band of the '80s has been able to write anthems which take the cock out of rock and still devour any stadium or hall without attracting the lagered legions of rugby boys with dull damp pits to their U2 T-shirts and underwear. That unification of the lonely and the choosy brings out a fiery and youthful roar untainted by the macho chants that generally plague Live LPs.

The Smiths were described in the NME during this tour as being a "nun-eating rock monster" and "Rolling Stones soundalikes"! Well this pop boy says, Thank god the band were arrogant in their obstinacy and self-belief. The Smiths were about independence; sexual, social, political, musical and mental independence, and the worst thing they could have done would have been to start being led by the press' expectations. The mediocre British mainstream may have hated The Smiths but frankly I have never heard Simon Bates or Jimmy Tarbuck or Erasure say anything as worthy as: "Hang the blessed DJ/Because the music that they constantly play/It says nothing to me about my life". Nor have I ever heard Frank Bough pull up such a profound tribute to 'Metal Guru' as Marr manages on the same song.

'Rank' perfectly captures The Smiths and their own reflections of life in Britain. Or rather the romantic assumptions we'd like to make about Albion. The rapes and the hate and the class bitterness never figure directly and yet somehow Morrissey's own anguish, and those landmarks and figures he chooses to illustrate it with, are all obvious products of the more worthless and languid sides of our society.

Even as I write the tide of the turncoat rises and falls in me because, like personal relationships, my own interest in The Smiths has either been lifted by love or crippled by frustration. And 'Rank' above everything else exposes The Smiths as a humane and caring band amongst a sea of white trash and colourful cut-throat money-making. And to look back on love rather than forward always involves as much regret as happiness.

Live LPs rarely work. 'Rank' does. It captures The Smiths during their most creative period, playing their music with speed, passion, and ferocity - three qualities the band possessed that were so often overlooked. For those of you seeking a reformation 'Rank' will only make matters worse, it is a live recording of rare raw talent. And for those of you interested in trivia the run off groove is inscribed with the word 'Peepholism'.

I think the journalists have stopped throwing things now, Morrissey. (10)

Jamies Brown