Smiths "The Queen is Dead" Review

MONARCHY IN THE UK

THE SMITHS ‘The Queen Is Dead*

(Rough Trade ROUGH 96) *****

THE ALBUM of the week comes half-pretty in pink, yet eloquently monosyllabic in monochromatic grey/green. The Smiths have always wrapped themselves well. Evocative, assured and gleefully funny. And that’s only the still of your four Smiths standing, like Ramones who can read, outside the Salford Lads Club on the comer of Coronation Street (a joke within a joke here).

The album of the week introduces itself with half a snatch from Cicely Courtneidge’s unforgettable (if you’ve ever heard of it, you can’t forget it) 'Take Me Back To Blighty’, and then sweeps this backwards glance aside with a flurry of exuberant drumming and a looming loop of guitar. The pause is stretched beyond the limit. Distorted vocals drop a hint, and half the western world wonders.

Is it Susan And Her Banshees? Is it Altered Images? Oh grow up, take a look at the top of the page and giggle uncontrollably as the monarchy fumbles. Morrissey is going to explain that the Queen is Dead, that the church is grasping and decadent, and that the whole country has gone to the dogs (it was probably Harold Wilson’s fault!). He is also going to crack some really good jokes.

As a thematic essay, the title track is far from original. But as an expression of every healthy young depressive's dissatisfaction with the times, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck snap to a rigid attention.

Rhythm ’n’ iconoclasm.

There will be those who cannot bring themselves to love the yucks in lines like “I checked all the registered historical facts and I was shocked into shame to discover how I'm the 18th pale descendant of some old queen or other".

But then, there are still those who choose on the point of stubborn principle not to swoon before Morrissey’s magnificently tuneless yet pricelessly elegant and inspiring intonation. He may be consequential and completely self-obsessed, but he is also splendid. All the optimistic, if merrily pessimistic, among us could have wanted, 'The Queen is Dead’ flows over with charm. With self-pity, with mother-love, with endless introspection. With poetry, with favouritism, and with despair at the fools who cannot see that to base a song around a line from a film is a tribute, and not a cheat.

With need. And with the purifying fire of sympathetic pop humour which courses through the veins of The Smiths.

'The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ was the most pleasantly relaxed and beautifully soul searching pop single of its time. Six of the other songs here match up to that marvellous moment. This makes 'The Queen Is Dead' the album of the month. A year is a long time in pop music.

ROGER HOLLAND