Tuesday 11 September 2012

"Strangeways, Here We Come" - The Smiths (1987)



"I travelled to a mystical time zone,
But I missed my bed,
And I soon came home."

Is the Summer over? Can I come out of hibernation now? What did I miss?

So… we were talking about The Smiths. "Oh no, Michael. Let’s move on  to something else." Ah, but we can’t. We need to wallow in the 25th anniversary of "Strangeways…" and The Smiths splitting. The news that Johnny Marr had left the group had broken in the NME a month back. It almost ruined my week on holiday in Swanage with my grandparents and cousins. Above the Mary Chain on the cover was a big ‘Why I Quit’ headline. Oh, here it is…       

My copy of this is in the loft somewhere, so thank you vinylonthe.net.
Come on, you know you’ve missed these stupidly detailed musings. Heartbroken by the seaside, there was at least one final studio album on the way. Though the cloying absurdity of their current single ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’ didn’t bode well.

Morrissey has often claimed ‘Strangeways…’ is his favourite album. Marr too. I can’t agree as ‘The Queen Is Dead’ remains their glistening pinnacle for me. But they bowed out in their own inimitable style with some wonderfully intuitive paeans to the loveless, witless and, er, spleenless. And no-one rolls an ‘r’ quite like Morrissey.
  
Let’s hope they never reunite.


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