I have decided that "vauxhall and I" is the best morrissey album

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am i right or wrong? or just incredibly sad and lonely?

― Jackson, Monday, 4 October 2004 03:38 (8 years ago) Permalink

You're absolutely right.

I'm sad & lonely too.

― Old Fart At Play, Monday, 4 October 2004 03:43 (8 years ago) Permalink

Ive been stabbed in the back
so many, many times

i dont have any skin

thats just the way it goes

― Jackson, Monday, 4 October 2004 03:44 (8 years ago) Permalink

"The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get" is certainly the best Morrissey single, IMO.
On the whole I think I liked Your Arsenal better maybe?
I'd have to hear them both again, it's been like seven years.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Monday, 4 October 2004 03:44 (8 years ago) Permalink

i didnt even know about the smiths until this past march

so obviously im still obsessed, i only kinda liked your arsenal

the perfect smiths song is "please please please"

― Jackson, Monday, 4 October 2004 03:46 (8 years ago) Permalink

Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want is my favorite Smiths song, too, but this may be because of the instrumental version I heard in Ferris Bueller's Day Off 98345743875023489752 times before I found out it was the Smiths.
Yes, it's perfect.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Monday, 4 October 2004 03:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

I actually had the epiphany todaythat it was teh best album ever. I was SAD AS FUCK

― Sonny, Ah!!1 (Sonny A.), Monday, 4 October 2004 03:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

i didnt even know about the smiths until this past march

Jackson are you Aja?

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Monday, 4 October 2004 03:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

bona drag is my most-listened to

― ivy, Monday, 4 October 2004 05:22 (8 years ago) Permalink

Hmmm, I'm not sure I voted for this in my 90s poll. Maybe I should've. It's a good one.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 4 October 2004 05:25 (8 years ago) Permalink

You're absolutely right.
I'm sad & lonely too.

-- Old Fart At Play (VivaQuarr...), October 4th, 2004 11:43 PM. (link)

Wait wait, is this Old Fart? Posting without exclamation points???

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 4 October 2004 05:26 (8 years ago) Permalink

I agree; it is the best. 'Now My Heart Is Full' is far better than 'The More You Ignore Me'; the latter might be my least favourite on the album, actually. I like them all right now, though -the albums, that is. I've yet to pick up Viva Hate or Maladjusted, mind.

Have we done the critical reappraisal of Kill Uncle yet? I just picked it up, and it's far better than I'd been led to believe. 'Mute Witness', 'King Leer', and 'Driving Your Girlfriend Home' are lovely.

I've got a US b-side compilation called My Early Burglary Years that's quite fantastic. search 'At Amber', 'Boxers', 'Nobody Loves Us', and 'I'd Love To'.

― derrick (derrick), Monday, 4 October 2004 05:37 (8 years ago) Permalink

'Now My Heart Is Full' is far better than 'The More You Ignore Me'

I'm gonna have to strenuously disagree. I fuckin HATE NMHIF. Tuneless twaddle to these ears. Each to his own I guess.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Monday, 4 October 2004 06:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

So many people seem to think Vauxhall is one of his best. I just can't understand it. Better than the first album??

― Bimble (bimble), Monday, 4 October 2004 06:48 (8 years ago) Permalink

i hold grudges like high court judges.

― splooge (thesplooge), Monday, 4 October 2004 11:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

is speedway directed at anyone, or just music journalists? i think it's a great end track. love the album, but then never bothered with any other of his solo efforts, so discount my vote on this plz

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Monday, 4 October 2004 12:47 (8 years ago) Permalink

I like Viva Hate more, but only slightly more.

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 4 October 2004 15:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

I just checked, and I did put Vauxhall and I on my 90s list after all, albeit toward the end.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 4 October 2004 15:10 (8 years ago) Permalink

YOUR ARSENAL

― manthony m1cc1o (Anthony Miccio), Monday, 4 October 2004 15:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

Your Arsenal > Viva Hate > Bona Drag > Vauxhall and I

― Atnevon (Atnevon), Monday, 4 October 2004 20:59 (8 years ago) Permalink

Southpaw and Beethoven > Vauxhall and Arsenal.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 4 October 2004 21:28 (8 years ago) Permalink

I feel like the new record belongs somewhere in the top 4. its solid. vauxhall's entire second side is pretty boring until speedway and mostly forgettable. your arsenal has some snoozers towards the front. the new album only has about 2 songs I cant stand (come back to camden).

― still bevens (bscrubbins), Monday, 4 October 2004 21:39 (8 years ago) Permalink

toss-up between Bona Drag and Vauxhall and I (the only two solo records I bothered to own).

Speedway is a fantastic album-closer. "In my own sick way, I've always been true to you...." it's a maudlin, self-martyred paean to his fans, obviously. Oh look at what he has sacrificed for us all, all the public slings and arrows he has endured just to be true to us...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 4 October 2004 21:46 (8 years ago) Permalink

yeah, about the latest one : so what's the idea now after a few months, after the hype ?
i still haven't bought it although i almost have all he/the smiths have released (apart from southpaw).

― AleXTC (AleXTC), Monday, 4 October 2004 21:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

Funny I always thought Speedway was about a closet gay love affair.

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), Tuesday, 5 October 2004 03:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

the new one is still just okay. I think it signals the beginning of Moz's Las Vegas years though.

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 5 October 2004 03:59 (8 years ago) Permalink

That's dead on about Vauxhall's second side being a downer until Speedway. It's like the sound of gauze or something. Totally mushy. And it's too bad because the first side is pretty good. But I like Kill Uncle so who knows.

― danh (danh), Tuesday, 5 October 2004 04:03 (8 years ago) Permalink

The new one's good, yeah. 'Solid' is an apt descriptor. It's not as iconoclastic as his best work, perhaps, but worthy. search 'First of The Gang To Die' and 'The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores'

Southpaw is underrated; I love it. The closing of 'Do Your Best and Don't Worry' may be his best rock moment.

I'll agree that 'Used to Be a Sweet Boy' and 'The Lazy Sunbathers' are a bit low, but 'I Am Hated For Loving' and 'Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself' rank among the man's best work. I love the chainsaw that opens 'Speedway'

― derrick (derrick), Tuesday, 5 October 2004 04:13 (8 years ago) Permalink

Fuck. I want to listen to this now, but my brother's ex-girlfriend has it for some goddamn reason.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 5 October 2004 04:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

2 years pass...

Have we done the critical reappraisal of Kill Uncle yet? I just picked it up, and it's far better than I'd been led to believe.

i just listened to this for the first time in at least ten years after listening to ringleader and you are the quarry and it sounded great in comparison.

― akm, Friday, 9 March 2007 23:34 (6 years ago) Permalink

Its the best album, but Bona Drag is his best collection of songs/CD/whatever

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 9 March 2007 23:37 (6 years ago) Permalink

I think Kill Uncle got a bad rap before because it was weird, slow, and had squishy unnatural production values. Give it some time, of course, and it begins to seem awesome on at least two of those same grounds. From the cover on in, it's also kind of the Ultimate Morrissey Object (at least from an American fan perspective), a bit like Pavement's Wowee Zowee -- it's basically the apotheosis of all the traits you'd work into a caricature of the guy, with extra helpings of floofy / loungy crooning ("King Leer"), moaniness ("Asian Rut"), miserablism, self-mythologizing ("I'm the End of the Family Line"), and even that "Driving Your Girlfriend Home" song, which seems like a near-deliberate pandering to sensitive-wallflower teenage-boy fans. And sonically and melodically and such it's REALLY odd and unnatural, I think, in exactly the way that (in those years) went with "drama club moaner," as opposed to a rock sound -- that's kind of an unremembered split these days, but coming into the 90s it was fairly important. It's strange to think that it was while touring for this album that he took on the pomaded guitar band that wound bring him into the 90s rock style he's more or less stayed with ever since: it suits him fine, and they can at least do those rockabilly flourishes when they need variety, but we're not going to hear anything like that first wave of weird synth-assisted Morrissey ever again, I don't think. It ended flat out with Kill Uncle.

― nabisco, Saturday, 10 March 2007 00:00 (6 years ago) Permalink

that tour (the first one) was the only time I ever saw morrissey and it was great. but I hear it got worse and worse after that. I'm still really glad I went to that show.

― akm, Saturday, 10 March 2007 00:41 (6 years ago) Permalink

Yeah Nabisco, I'd never thought of it that way, but yeah: the Kill Uncle tour (which even came to New Zealand, where I lived - the 1st and only time seeing Morrissey) was the start of the Boz Boorer / rockabilly / big guitar phase that he seems to have been in ever since. I find most of the driving, upbeat songs he's recorded over the past four albums to be dirgey and too bold.

― paulhw, Saturday, 10 March 2007 01:14 (6 years ago) Permalink

5 years pass...

To think of what Morrissey meant to me in the spring of '91 -- and the degree to which What He Meant To Me was connected to this transitional rockabilly sound -- requires me to uncover what exactly made him stand out in the same period.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 9 June 2012 03:19 (1 year ago) Permalink

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