Southpaw Grammar

Southpaw Grammar
"There's no reason anyone who already owns a record made by Morrissey should even want to hear this record"
"... all the crisp wit that a Morrissey album ought to have"

The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils

Do Your Best And Don't Worry

Best Friend On The Payroll

Southpaw
Released In August 1995

Yea-Sayers:

Southpaw Grammar is Morrissey's version of classical - not classic - rock. The songs combine orchestral pieces - once literally, in "The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils," a thicket of symphonic riffs and rock percussion, elsewhere using drums and guitar, as on the climactic "Southpaw" - and pop tunes unprettied by normal contour or instrumentation. The backgrounded gray roar that beguiles Morrissey's voice comes from different shades of guitar crosstalk, the occasional bowed string, and moody drumming, all knowingly placed and accumulated. It's a vibe record, only eight songs long, but that suits Morrissey's flair for drama and soi-disant comedy. "You say pleasant thing/And there is no need to," he bellyaches on "The Operation."
The album finds the chronicler of suicidal headmasters and despised Porsche-drivers working again with Steve Lillywhite. Their music here differs entirely from the crushed-flowers studio formalizations of last year's Vauxhall And I, building instead on the earlier Your Arsenal, Morrissey's sly, unexpected blend of rockabilly and glam. Even more, it recalls the fuzzy clarity of Beethoven Was Deaf, the 1993 import-only Paris live set that also featured the enormous riffs and gnomic accents of Southpaw Grammar guitarists Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer.
Though there's nothing as tightly constructed and hilarious as "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get," Southpaw Grammar consolidates and improves on this gift Morrissey possesses for live rock'n'roll. It combines the rip-roaring abandon of a crack rock band with the structural know-how of an old Sandie Shaw single. Pop perfection isn't the goal of these operatic jams, just a clarion attack answerable only to itself. (8)
- James Hunter, SPIN

Looming: Morrissey's very own chaos theory

Wherein Morrissey discovers the missing link between the Byrds' jingle-jangle and Young/Cobain grunge. In contrast to Vauxhall and I, often gentle of mood and sentiment, his debut on the label of Presley and Lou Reed plays loud all the way. Ensconced with the same producer, Steve Lillywhite, and the same guitarist co-writers, Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer, this time Morrissey ordered up chaos unremitting; his colleagues responded with layers of grunt and grind screaming like Munch's man with the twisty face. Fortunately, this presents uniformity as coherence rather than monotony. Only one song, Do Your Best and Don't Worry, sags into rock stodge and lyrical vagueness. Otherwise, bracketed by two pieces of megaMoz 10-minute-plus dimensions, his new hammerhead pop is at its most accessible through a pair of typical vignettes. Best Friend on the Payroll, lashed by Boorer and Whyte's chunk and chop clangour, tells of a welcome outstayed ("I turn the music down/I don't know why/This is my house"), while bold first single Dagenham Dave nudges and winks about a would-be laddish Billericay Dickie counterpart with orientation problems ("He'd love to touch/He's afraid that he might self-combust/I could say more/But you get the general idea").

No levity to Reader Meet Author, Boy Racer and The Operation, though. Just cynicism, fear and looming violence. But the muck-or-nettles fate of the album rests on those bookend epics. A gloomy orchestral motif (not unlike Shostakovich's Fifth) loops through The Teachers are Afraid of the Pupils. Niggled and clawed at by guitars and electronic racket, it's a hellish backdrop to Morrissey intoning Trial-style paranoia-as in Kafka, or Michael Jackson perhaps-provoked by the current moral panic over child abuse: "Lay a hand on our children and it's never too late to have you." The closing track, Southpaw, recaptures this dense howlround of emotional turmoil quite effectively, except that its story of a lonely boy going home to mum seems rather small-scale and narrow in the context of the ongoing bloody great noise.

Despite his gifts and craftsmanship as a writer, Morrissey's drab drone remains a taste unacquired by multitudes and Southpaw Grammar shapes up as the kind of severe work that accrues more honour than love, more favourable comments than sales to record-buyers who, by and large, look to musicians to proffer the carrot rather than the stick. -----Phil Sutcliffe, Q, (4/5)

It should have been the glorious album that restored the Great Mozzarella to the British bosom, seeing him carried from town to town upon the broad shoulders of cheering crowds. Instead, he ended the year playing to indifferent audiences waiting impatiently for David Bowie. Yet within the churning, bloated extravagance of its first and last tracks and the lurching, punch-drunk songs in between, there is all the crisp wit that a Morrissey album ought to have. Impressive, too, is the cool insolence of that drum solo half way through. One day, surely, the crowds may return en masse. Until that day comes, as one of Southpaw Grammar's titles has it: Do Your Best and Don't Worry.
-Q, 50 Best Albums of 1995

Nay-Sayers:

So RCA have lost Robbie from Take That and gained Morrissey. Morrissey has gained another quaint retro logo - the 1970s orange RCA Victor symbol familiar to old Bowie and Lou Reed fans - and has made antoher album, his fifth proper solo job, using the same producer and band from 'Vauxhall And I'.
That's the objective bit out of the way. Welcome, readers, to the awesome iron elephant that is 'Southpaw Grammar', two very long songs, six jolly songs and a drum solo, all combining to make a record that sends prestension on a blind date with smugness and pretends not to notice when they don't get on.
We are, this time round, spared any dubious songs about Bengalis who don't belong here or visits to fascist discos. ("I didn't invent the Union Jack" he sulked to a journalist recently, adding that he "didn't understand the fascist implications of it". Morrissey didn't invent being an issue-fudging twat either.) There are no ballads. The twinkling insouciance of 'Kill Uncle' and the razor glam of 'Your Arsenal' are absent. Instead, Moz and the gang give RCA what they want, which is a loud mess to sell to America. Every song here is crushed under the weight of loud guitars and mind-numbing overdubs. It sounds great on paper, The Smiths you can mosh to, but it isn't. Lillywhite's and the band's use of volume add nothing to the songs; it's there so that, when the listener thinks 'Hang on, this tune is rubbish', a huge racket rushes in to shout 'Look over there! A mongoose in a beret!', and when the listener returns to the song, it's over.
The opening track, 'The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils' and the closing 'Southpaw' are the king examples of this. As 'Southpaw' - a pleasant tune about a sad lad, for a change - goes into its seventh minute or so, one's attention slips into the garden for a fag and then UNG UNG UNG - for no reason at all some sod starts bashing away at a set of tablas. It doesn't bring a new dimension or anything to the song, it's just some sod bashing away at a set of tablas.
'The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils' is similar. Probably about some teachers who are afraid of their pupils because of popular uproar over child abuse, 'The Headmaster Ritual' meets 'Suffer Little Children' in a rather unsuccessful crossover. 'The Teachers...' starts with orchestral murmurings, builds up and then goes bang into a very poor My Bloody Valentine copy, all weedy feedback and peach fuzz. The intention is obviously to create an air of menace, all brooding and imminent, but, instead, it sends one racing up Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire.
The rest of the album is nothing like as bad, and even has one great moment; the single, 'Dagenham Dave', is genuinely funny, all Moz wit about an Essex man with a great chorus (and title stolen, bizarrely, from an old Stranglers song about a roadie of theirs who drowned). But as for the rest, there's little to choose between the friendly and encouraging 'Do Your Best And Don't Worry', 'Reader Meet Author', a chunky power pop ditty about people who slum it, the self-explanatory and jaunty 'Boy Racer', and 'Best Friend On The Payroll', a lyrically somewhat slight affair about guess what? And the only thing that distinguishes 'The Operation' - about someone who's different ever since, etc - is the ridiculous two-minute drum solo at the start. The kindest thing you can say about that is it makes the album two minutes longer.
Morrissey's sacrificed light and shade, and wit and insight just to make two portentous musical non-statements. The other songs, tuneful though they are, comment about issues for which the word "trivia" is too mighty, and substitute thumping around in an attic full of tin boxes for production and arrangement. In the end, there's no reason why anyone who already owns a record made by Morrissey - or, more particularly, The Smiths - should even want to hear this record, let alone buy it. Its maker should call himself The Morrissey Formerly Known As Artiste.
- David Quantick, New Musical Express, August 26, 1995

It may surprise some that Morrissey's solo career has already been longer than the band which gained worldwide notoriety, the Smiths. But, unlike the band's consistent high level of productivity, Morrissey's solo career has been plagued with inconsistency - he'll always remain in the shadow of his prior work with Johnny Marr. His latest release, Southpaw Grammar, falls into that middle range of his solo efforts.
The first indication that Morrissey has consciously decided to switch gears is on the leadoff track, "The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils". Clocking in at more than eleven minutes, this reminds one of a possible throw-away session from U2's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me". The operatic noises are bound to overwhelm those listeners who prefer Morrissey's slower works, but this author remains convinced that his voice and cutting lyrics work best with a solid, fast musical backing.
Luckily, the rest of the album's eight songs opt for this rock sound. The first singles, "The Boy Racer" (U.S.) and "Dagenham Dave" (U.K.), are weaker-than-expected, and arguably his worst "first" solo singles from any of his albums. The problem isn't the songs - they're solid enough, but they don't have the hook that Morrissey has become known for. "Boy Racer", specifically, builds up to a crescendo that never comes, and almost seems like a second generation band whose idol was the Smiths. "The Operation" takes its opening drum riff from "The Queen Is Dead", and "Dagenham Dave" opens quite similarly to R.E.M.'s "Get Up".
Any of the "fast seven" could become singles, depending on the whim of the moment, and in and of itself, that bodes well for Southpaw Grammar; how many albums can boast seven singles? The problem with Morrissey is that he has established such a high level of excellence, when all cylinders are clicking, that anything less than his best pales in comparison. Ignoring his Smiths' works (which is an unfair comparison for anyone, including Morrissey), Viva Hate and Your Arsenal are true standout albums. Unfortunately, Southpaw Grammar can't match up to these two, and in fact is a pale imitation of Morrissey at his best.
If this was a brand new artist, we'd call it a promising debut, once they could take the songs to the "next level". But Morrissey isn't afforded this cushion, both among his fans and the media. Ignoring his compilation albums, it stands firmly in the middle of his solo work; worse than the aforementioned two albums, and better than Vauxhall and I and Kill Uncle. And some of Morrissey's uniqueness - which helped build his sensational fan base - appears to have worn off.
- Bob Gajarsky, Consumable Online

A new label, but nothing fresh has been added to the mix. Bookended by two 10-minute dirges on the theme of school brutality, this is his most nondescript and half-arsed collection to date. "Reader Meet Author" is a nicely acerbic comment on class war, but singles "Dagenham Dave" and "The Boy Racer" are instantly forgettable. (**)
- Stephen Dalton, Uncut, 1998

Moz-Speak:

"Southpaw Grammar is the school of hard knocks. It's coming up the hard way and taking your bruises with you."
- Morrissey, Q, September 1995

"Reader Meet Author" seems to be about people who "slum it".
"I've come across it many times. It's a fascinating phenomenon. Especially amongst music journalists who pretend to understand all aspects of life however degrading. It amuses me that these people are middle class and I know a few and their preoccupation is in meddling with the destitute and desperate as a hobby. Middle-class writers are fascinated by those who struggle. They find it righteous and amusing... On the song you mention, I sing, 'The year 2000 won't change anyone here' and that's true. It won't change their lives. They won't be catapulted into space age culture and mobile fax machines. The poor remain poor. Someone has to work in Woolworth's."
- Morrissey, Q, September 1995