Morrissey doesn't need me to champion his new record. Fans will be delighted and the haters will keep on hatin'. But, as promised, the trepidation I felt on first listen has melted away and I can be counted among the delighted. I may be the one guy in Larrytown blaring "You Are the Quarry" from my dusty blue Corolla like it's Outkast or DMX. I actually skipped in to work today because of this cd. Or maybe I'm just a dork.

This is no "Hatful of Hollow". He isn't saying anything new and the music is hardly adventurous. At first I wanted to talk about how many of the songs were striking out--at America, England, critics, today's 15-minute pop stars, fans, leeches, even U.S.-Mexico relations are given a romantic & wistful railing in a live song that has yet to become a b-side--how the photo on the cover is Moz packing heat, and the logo for the resurrected reggae label Attack Records is significant. But as far as attacks go it's nothing you haven't heard before and I'm left longing for something a bit more biting and insightful.

"Longing for" may be the key. I think what attracts me to Morrissey is that he keeps reminding me that Outside isn't such a bad place to reside. When the disco burns down with all the lemmings inside I'll be sitting safe in my room pining over the gender-ambiguous "one" who looks right through me. M. popped into my life when I was 16 and said things that I needed to hear, that I wanted other people to hear but couldn't say--like any artist worth his weight in tofu. And these things really don't change no matter how adult we think we've become. We can rationalize the teenage drama out of being alone or misunderstood but we're still just that. So when he sings in "Come Back to Camden": Your leg came to rest against mine/Then you lounged with knees up and apart/and me and my heart/we knew/we just knew/forevermore--it takes me back and god do I know, I just know.
There's more on my mind but I have to go to bed.