Review: "Years of Refusal

It is frighteningly easy to think of Morrissey in terms of being an icon. Not the prosaic, pop culture sort that we've all become accustomed to (though certainly the case could be made that he is), or the airbrushed angels you can buy at any truck stop for a few dollars while stopping for gas and a sandwich along any US Interstate highway.

No, Morrissey feels altogether more pre-Vatican II, executed in blood red and gold and wrenched into uncomfortable angles, suffering for the benefit of those souls in the dark in search of grace. That he has managed to stay so for so long defies explanation. It is, to be frank, a little spooky.

From the moment the first chord comes tearing out of the speakers, Years of Refusal does everything to support this notion. More energetic by far than 2006's Ringleader of the Tormentors, this is Morrissey at his desperate best.

Whereas Ringleader felt more contemplative, Years of Refusal is (with the sole exception of a gently elegiac track entitled "You Were Good In Your Time") guitar-driven, kinetic, and instantly listenable. Musically, Years of Refusal feels like a solid marriage between the energy of records like Your Arsenal and Southpaw Grammar with the production quality and sophistication of Morrissey's more recent releases on the Attack label. It's a credit not only to Morrissey's own staying power, but his ability to choose strong, long-term collaborators like Alain Whyte, Boz Boorer, and Jesse Tobias who seem to share his creative vision.

Unsurprisingly, Years covers a lot of rough thematic ground. The album's opening track, "Someone Is Squeezing My Skull" is the anxious cry someone trying to scrape its way out of the pit between over-medication and suffering, while the album's first single, "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" is an ode to spurned defiance. The casual cruelty of "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore" (which reads more and more sinister the more one listens) might be the darkest point on the record, which is saying something for an album awash in overt allusions to death (hint: "One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell" and "When Last I Spoke to Carol" do exactly what they say on the tin).

All in all, Years of Refusal is forty plus minutes of Morrissey doing what he does best. He croons his way through all the longing, loss, and awful, sorry nastiness of life as if it were the most beautiful, natural thing in the world. After a couple of listens, it's not hard to believe it might be.