Ringleader Of The Tormentors
If you don't get your hopes up too high, you'll be pleased enough with Morrissey's eighth studio effort. This is not an easy thing to do, of course, even for the casual fan. After all, not only was the Moz's 2004You Are the Quarrya total return to form after enough of an absence to cause all of the cells in your body to regenerate, but this terrifically titled album finds the iconoclastic singer working with legendary Bowie and T. Rex producer Tony Visconti, all the while aided and abetted by soundtrack giant Ennio Morricone and a children's chorus. How could that go wrong? None of it goeswrong, per se. This isn't a wholesale reworking of an artist's approach à laTransor something. It simply sounds rather rushed and generic: even the lyrics seem, bizarrely, un-subtle. Fans will no doubt need it (and likely own it already), but neophytes to the exquisite pleasures of this musical dandy are directed elsewhere in his catalog.--Mike McGonigal