World Peace Is None of Your Business
15 July 2014
Harvest
3.5 stars out of 5
The one thing we can count on regarding Morrissey is that he
never changes. He never tries to update his sound or take any risks of any
kind. Musically, he’s about as predictable as the climax of a porno, but his
fans have never been interested in his music—it’s his lyrics that make the
world go round. And in the category of wordplay, bad puns, and that
simultaneously poisonously cynical and heartbreakingly tender pose that only
Moz can pull off, World Peace Is None of
Your Business is about as good as it gets.
To begin the new record, his tenth, Morrissey sneers at the
democratic process (the title track) and people having babies (“Neal Cassady
Drops Dead”). His anti-infant venom simply must be heard to be believed. It’s
completely awe-inspiring, really, and to reprint a few lines of the lyrics here
wouldn’t do it justice. And then, there’s this: “Hurray, hurray, the
bullfighter dies, and nobody cries, because we all want the bull to survive.” Clearly,
the Mozzer brought his A-game to the recording studio in terms of his lyrics.
So what if the music’s dull and conventional? It’s functional, in that it gives
a framework in which Morrissey can input his words, and that’s all that’s
really necessary as far as he’s concerned.
It’s probably safe to say that Morrissey stopped caring
about staying current and winning new fans a long time ago. Given the
ever-growing cult of The Smiths (which was never small to begin with), any new
material will always be just be superfluous. Its only real purpose is to remind
us that he has a new tour coming up, and while he will never make a bad record,
once you’ve heard one Morrissey LP you’ve heard ‘em all.
reviewed by Richard Krueger
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