Though plenty of people seem to like it today, the critical, commercial, and historical death of Morrissey's last album, Southpaw Grammar, does not seem to have bothered the boss man himself. Maybe the first lines of his sixth studio album are indeed a pleading "I want to start from before the beginning," but the beginning itself launches straight from Southpaw Grammar's own opener, and the only difference is, Morrissey's back to writing short songs again. That means an end to the extended instrumental workouts that characterized Grammar, but that's not to say Maladjusted is any less egalitarian, as regular co-writers Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer are joined by drummer Spencer Cobrin, whose "Wide to Receive" is actually one of the album's highlights. It joins two magnificently melodramatic efforts, the orchestral "Ambitious Outsiders" and "Sorrow Will Come in the End," as well as the single, "Alma Matters," and the sublimely titled "Satan Rejected My Soul." Accounting for almost half the album's bodyweight, these cuts not only defy the post-Grammar doomsayers insistence that Morrissey had finally lost it, but also serve notice that his eye for context over content is not necessarily incompatible with his status as one of the great songwriters of the age. Besides, there are enough "classic" Morrissey songs knocking around here (the Vauxhall-esque "Trouble Loves Me," the pun-packed "Roy's Keen," and the playfully plagiaristic "Papa Jack" included) to please even the most despairing palate. Which means normal service has been resumed, and Morrissey's still on top.
- Dave Thompson, Alternative Press, 1997
(Donated by Jamie)

Confounding his obituary writers once more, Morrissey's most recent studio collection is a buoyant barrage of orchestral anthems and bruise-coloured ballads. The elegant "Trouble Loves Me" and the elegiac "Papa Jack" tug at the heart strings while "Roy's Keen" pays playful homoerotic homage to a window cleaner. An attractively packaged first release from his latest record label. Shame about the obligatory crap single, "Alma Matters". (***)
- Stephen Dalton, Uncut, 1998

On the dust jacket of his 1994 Morrissey hagiography "Landscapes Of The Mind", Moz made the following novel claim: "I'm in a dialogue with my audience, and that's something I need." Now in '97, "Papa Jack" goes against this golden view of fan/star independance: "Papa Jack wants to turn back the clock, and reach out to the kids he once had, who have flown/Looking deep in his heart, Papa Jack doesn't like what he sees...now you can't always have it your way." Suddenly enraged, the song becomes The Who's "I Can See For Miles" and we have the boxing-thug Moz we have known since the skinny model ditched the foliage years ago.
Which is just as well, because "Maladjusted", his ninth LP, enjoys the aptest name since Melvyn Bragg. Still smarting from losing a fortune to ex-Smiths drummer Mike Joyce in court, this is Moz at his bitterest, a mocking response to the cumbersome stinker that was "Southpaw Grammar" and his increasingly marginalised position. Beginning with feedback and a voice intoning "On this glorious occasion, on this splendid defeat," the world-view is debased with relish. Glib and predatory, he sings of transgressing; "Working girls like me/With my hands on my head I'll flop on your bed...Maladjusted". It's an opener as exhilarating as "The Queen Is Dead".
Like "Vauxhall & I", "Maladjusted" reveals personal subject matter rather than just complaining about pesky kids (as on "Southpaw"). Alternating self-loathing and dubious self-suffiency, "Trouble Loves Me" ("Still running around.....at your age")tells of an unattained love, like a grown and jaded "There Is A Light". Speculation is invited about his lively interest in the aesthetics of the male form. "Even when it's under your nose, you just can't see it can you?" goes "Roy's Keen". Camply doffing the toupee to George Formby, it tells of a charming yet dangerous window cleaner "dunking the shammy" and going "up the ladder".
Sometimes you see a little more than you'd have liked, of course. The spoken word orchestral "Sorrow Will Come In The End" (now removed) is as fascinating as it is unendearing. "I've got no space and no time in my life anymore for revenge" (from "Ammunition") is a line that clangs. The single "Alma Matters" is Smiths-model melancholy that could be from any time in the last ten years. Similarly, "Satan Rejected My Soul" is unrankable with the music being made by Suede or the Manics.
It mightn't have fans forgiving all as with "Vauxhall & I", but there is still a good deal to recommend "Maladjusted". The voice, linked to some fine musical moments, is unchanged. He's still demonstrating the same confusion, confession and refusal to go away that made him so great in the first place. And rather than joining Wacko Jacko in the deluded star chamber, this is an LP you can take seriously. Even if, like his quiff, the lustre is fading, he's still a star in an increasingly homogeneous array. When he bothers to remind us, he's still a genius making records like no one else. 3/5
- Select

When I was first introduced to the grimy world of record fairs at the start of the 80's, the places were almost entirely populated by ageing Teddy Boys. The hair was still black and Brylcreemed, but the passing years had rarely been kind and, like a squadron of Frank Worthingtons, they were all valiantly trying to maintain a quiff with no visible means of support.
Not wishing to mock anyone with a receding hairline, but my first look at the cover of Morrissey's "Alma Matters" sleeve took me right back to Wallington town hall circa 1982. Those Teds were the first people I'd come across who'd created a world of their own that shut out modernity : with the wife and kids trudling aroound at Tesco's, they could escape adulthood completely, thumbing through a box of old London 45s. Morrissey, as far as I know, doesn't even have the wife and kids to shunt off. World Of Morrissey. Permanent adolescence. "Who asked you anyway? It's my life to wreck my own way."
No one has seriously expected a groundbreaking LP from Morrissey for some time, but there's no doubt that the glammed-up Your Arsenal, the Smithsonianish Vauxhall & I, and the dark but patchy Southpaw Grammar, all featured some strong songwriting. The boundaries on Maladjusted were thus mapped out long ago. The opening title track recalls Southpaw's opener, "The Teachers Are Afraid of The Pupils", apocalyptic bombast with over-amped guitars and grim talk of Stevenage overspills and stifled Friday nights. Likewise, "Ambitious Outsiders" is lyrically a close relative of Your Arsenal's more threatening moments but the unpleasant subject matter here is veiled to the point of total obscurity - it could be about terrorists, paedophiles, Kula Shaker. Whatever, the string arrangement is unnecessarily oppressive and the overall feel is dirge-like. "Show me a barrel and watch me scrape it."
Maladjusted is at its best when gently self-mocking. If "Alma Matters" is a paean in defence of the introverted World of Morrissey (and his remaining followers who are doubtless just as hooked on Alma Cogan as La Moz), then "Trouble Loves Me", "Satan Rejected My Soul" and "Papa Jack" are happy taking pot-shots at this set-up before anyone else can. Again, this is nothing new - the title of Your Arsenal was self-explanatory - but "Papa Jack" is altogether more poignant. It concerns a fallen pop star, desperate to "turn back the clock and reach out to the kids". Autobiographical? Possibly. Either way, the tune's gorgeous, with a mid-70's arrangement pitched somewhere in between Mick Ronson and (ahem) "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road".
"Roy's Keen" is a corker, a jaunty ode to a bit of rough. "We've never seen a keener window ker-leener," indeed. Wispy harmonies and all, this has to be a single. Along with the melancholic "He Cried", it shows that Morrissey's way with a vocal melody is just as it ever was. So how come, as an LP, Maladjusted still feels unsatisfactory? "I don't dwell on what I'm missing, there's no space or time in my life."
Fine. Morrissey's world has space for The Angelic Upstarts, Oscar Wilde, Alma Cogan, The Marvelettes, and Naseem Hamed. No room for reggae? That never did Brian Wilson any harm. The mystery is that, with such diverse, eclectic influences, Maladjusted - like its half dozen predecessors - sounds so one dimensional, guitar heavy in such a predictable way. As ever, there are gentle hints at a possible new direction, but those have been dashed before. Ultimately, there are few moments of beauty : no "Seasick yet Still Docked", no "Hang On To Your Friends".
There's nothing wrong with making consistently good records, but Christ, Morrissey is such a wasted talent. He needs a new challenge - maybe as a collumnist or a TV pundit. at the very least he needs a new songwriting foil. Wrapped up tight in the old-Ted, old-time World of Morrissey, he probably doesn't care. But that's our loss as well as his.
- Bob Stanley, Uncut

Morrissey may be terminally maladjusted (or have you believe so), but his latest effort is more varied than 1995's "Southpaw Grammar" and possibly more acerbic than 1992's "Your Arsenal".
The title track is composed of opposites colliding, with Mozzer crooning "I want to start from before the beginning" against an abrasive, clattering background, as if he's about to reveal something more than his witty verses. The acoustic ballad "Papa Jack" casts our hero as the elder statesman who misses the attention that he once took for granted. "Sorrow Will Come in the End" is a string-drenched spoken-word screed against lawyers and liars _ the same things in the world of Morrissey. "Satan Rejected My Soul" has "self-pitying single" stamped all over it. ***1/2
Sara Sherr, The Philadelphia Inquirer

In America, dissatisfaction is considered a pathology. In Japan, England, and other countries whose cultures accept dissatisfaction as a part of life, Maladjusted, British pop star Morrissey's ninth solo album, has received glowing reviews. Here, however, most musical journalists dismiss pop stars critical of the staus quo. Hence the cold shoulder given to Michael Jackson's recent Blood on the Dance Floor, which includes lyrics that directly confront his demonization by the American press, and the simplistic "more morose Morrissey" insults flung at Maladjusted.
Since forming the Smiths in 1982, Morrissey has steadfastly refused to sing typical pop fodder. Instead, he tries to get at real truths about politics (Margaret on the Guillotine), earning a living (Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now), loneliness (Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me), and other topics using language heavily inspired by poets and playwrights like Oscar Wilde and the British kitchen sink dramas of the late '50s and early '60s. Morrissey frequently approaches lyrics as a film director, moving from close-up to long-shot, from himself to the world. As a result, his songs are extremely complicated and easily misunderstood.
The theme of this album, perhaps Morrissey's most autobiographical, seems to be aging. The singer is rapidly approaching 40, and many of the songs here reflect the contradictions that become apparent when you assess your life. Maladjusted begins with the line "I want to start from before the beginning," and the title track attempts to explain why Morrissey is who he is. He attacks the social constructs that repulse him -- masculinity, bureaucracy, romance -- and tries to reasssure himself by singing in falsetto at the song's conclusion, 'There's nothing wrong with you,' over and over. Trouble Loves Me describes the love/hate relationship Morrissey has with the dark cloud perpetually hanging over his head while throwing darts at the person who refuses to give him shelter. In Alma Matters, the album's first single, he tells off critics and accepts responsibility for self-destructive behavior, yet still hopes that his actions matter to someone else.
His sense of humor rears its head in Roy's Keen, a tale of thwarted sexual desire full of double-entendres and clever rhymes. And the album concludes with Morrissey joking about self-loathing in Satan Rejected My Soul (the song ends with him pleading for anyone to "take it, please"). You're left with the impression of a man growing older, aware of being trapped in a paradox: wanting to change but not being able to, waiting for someone to come to his rescue while knowing that solitude is the human condition.
Maladjusted is not perfect. The musicianship of his backing band is pedestrian. Only one song, Satan Rejected My Soul, includes a memorable guitar melody. And the misfit track Sorrow Will Come in the End, a bitter diatribe directed at the judge who decided against Morrissey in a lawsuit involving former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce, should have been relegated to a single B side.
But considering the album's language and ideas, as well as Morrissey's affected vocals, Maladjusted is the most compelling pop album released so far this year. In a country where liking yourself is the most highly valued personal achievement and where intelligence is suspect, Morrissey obviously has limited mass appeal. Nonetheless, he deserves to go down in music history as one of pop's few true artists.
- Jeffery Kennedy, San Francisco Bay Reporter

Morrissey released his 7th solo album, Maladjusted, and nothing has really changed. Morrissey is still Morrissey and his songs still speak the lonely, brokenhearted and disenfranchised. As original as this record is you can still hear visitations to many great and not so great bands from the past. The best song on the album, "Trouble Loves Me," is so Beatlesque, it may have been written by Lennon and McCartney. During "Papa Jack," you will swear you hear the drum solo and chord change from "I Can See For Miles" by The Who but that doesn't last long as the song changes and fades out with what appears to be some sort of tribute to Spinal Tap. The second single to be released, "Roy's Keen," closes in the spirit of the Partrige Family. That might sound sad, but remember, they had their own television show, Morrissey doesn't. This is definitely a good collection of songs that range from serious to silly, while sometimes the songs tend to be both at the same time. Highlights of the album are "Maladjusted," "Trouble Loves Me," "Papa Jack" and the closing song, "Satan Rejected My Soul." The latter of the songs is one of those songs that falls in the category of serious humour as Mozzer quips "Satan rejected my soul/As low as he goes/He never quite goes this low." If you are someone who has uttered the words "I can't stand Morrissey!" then this record will do nothing to change your mind. If you are someone who likes alternative music that doesn't have to be in-your-face rock and roll with lots of guitars, then check this one out. Maladjusted is a very good record. It may not be Morrissey's best work, but its certainly one of the better records released in 1997.
- Jim McDonald

Stephen Morrissey was the misanthropic lyricist, vocalist and frontman. Johnny Marr was the guitarist supreme and musical genius. At least that was one common perception of the late, great Smiths, which ruled the British rock world for a chunk of the '80s. When a partnership like this splits, it's usually the guy with the guitar and the stronger musical background who ends up flourishing. But while Marr has seemingly played the role of caddie to a number of established artists like Billy Bragg and Bernard Sumner (with whom he is supposedly a partner in the group Electronic), Morrissey has continued to produce music that is surprisingly satisfying and Smith-like.
With Maladjusted, the prince of paranoia and petulance again rifles out lyrics like "It's my life to wreck my own way" and delectable song titles such as "Satan Rejected My Soul." More impressive is his ongoing ability to fashion a strong melody and/or challenging arrangement around his sometimes morbid thoughts.
The title track is a tortured but very listenable piece of tribal goth-rock; an airy ambience and an upbeat tunefulness surround "Alma Matter's"; and "Roy's Keen" gains momentum as a jangly rocker. Most interesting of all is "Sorrow Will Come in the End," a doom and gloom revenge song that contains some waltz-like strings.
Clearly, Morrissey lends credence to the belief that happiness is the enemy of the artist. Long may he suffer.
- Jon Matsumoto, BAM Magazine, September 26, 1997

There were four blokes I used to spend quite a bit a time with: Johnny, Morrissey, Andy and Mike -- together they called themselves the Smiths. Yeah, Morrissey could be overly literate and kinda self-obsessed, Johnny melodically moody, the other two willing to take the background. But despite some obvious tension between them, they usually got along in splendid ways, so I was always glad to hang. Anyway, the four of them had a falling out about a decade back, and I haven't seen much of any of them lately. Sure, Morrissey popped in once in every while, but without the others to counter his self-aggrandizing and mopey tendencies, I considered him a complete bore and made myself scarce. Just ran into him the other day, found him to be in pretty much the same sorts, reeling off lines like "And I've never felt quite so alone/ As I do right now" and "And I don't/ Get along with myself/ And I'm not too keen/ On anyone else." Gotta say, I was ready to bolt right quick. But instead I gave things a little extra time, and can say there were more than a few glints -- mostly what he said and how he said it -- of what made me appreciate him back then. (**)
- Steve Byrne, Sound Judgment