Review: Morrissey

Review: Morrissey

Morrissey "Ringleader of the Tormentors": Aidin Vaziri | Morrissey has gotten nearly as good at disappointing his fans as Prince and R.E.M. Having edged back to respectability with his 2004 release, "You Are the Quarry," the former Smiths leader goes a step further on his eighth solo album, "Ringleader of the Tormentors," where his newfound love of sex ("There are explosive kegs between my legs," he intones at one point) and his same old distaste for right-wing ideals explode with stately melodic urgency. Recording in Italy with famed glam-rock producer Tony Visconti (T. Rex, Bowie), he's given his dreary rockabilly sound an extreme makeover, and in tracks like "You Have Killed Me," "Life Is a Pigsty" and "Dear God, Please Help Me" (with regal string arrangements by Italian film composer Ennio Morricone) has produced at least a few new classics in his canon. That's saying a lot for the man who wrote "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" and "How Soon Is Now?" It's not the complete return to form his followers may have been banking on (someone please pass along Johnny Marr's phone number), but after the anticlimaxes of the past decade, such as 1995's "Southpaw Grammar" and 1997's soulless "Maladjusted," it's as good as anyone could have hoped for. It seems like all he needed was a good shag.