Just to confirm: this will be a review of the UK release of Meat is Murder, which is missing “How Soon is Now?” Don’t worry, we shall get to it another time.
Meat is Murder is The Smith’s political album. Wait, that not really true. Most Smith’s songs are in some way political. Hell, everything is political. Instead we should say Meet is Murder is the Smith’s polemical album. This is the one with something to say, dammit! And for the most part it says what it needs to well and with point. Also, in between the diatribes on ranging from the institution to the home, there is enough time for Morrissey’s nostalgic bravado and pining for relationships, as well as the band’s sonic experimentations compared to the ballads that so encapsulated the last record. All this gives The Smith’s sophomore effort an existence beyond the messages and prevents this from being a complete preachy slog…barring the obvious, obvious exceptions.
This seems to be typically regarded in critical circles as the worst Smith’s album, but really that is only in virtue of needing to have one. Production wise this is a much cleaner record than their debut; that album had two separate attempts at recording, with the second being a somewhat rushed job, and while that gives the first record a post-punk scrappiness you do get this is the sense that this is the pop aesthetic that they wanted in the first place (considering each band member’s own production credits on this record, and some of the different recordings placed on their brilliant first compilation Hatful of Hollow).
Unlike the slower build up in the first album, “The Headmaster Rituals” hits as hard and as immediate as its villainous teachers. Morrissey’s screed against corporal punishment – the kind that I have fortunately never had to experience – is still one of their best songs regardless of its somewhat dated intent (though as far as I’m aware spanking is still permitted in some States, but someone should let me know if I’m misinformed). This can be mostly be attributed to Marr’s talents on the old Rickenbacker, who absolutely hammers the hell out of these open chord riffs, (along with some fills that sound a lot like “Message in a Bottle.”) I can’t really think of an album intro like it. It’s a riff so bloody good that even Radiohead couldn’t replicate it fully (still a damn good cover though). But the “military two step” of Mike Joyce’s bass drums also give this track a great deal of strength.
As you might be able to tell from these first two tracks, The Smiths are beginning to take the trademark sound that they already established on the plentiful ballads of The Smiths and moving them into other genres. First is “The Headmaster Ritual’s” new wave rock vibes, and here in the often overlooked “Rusholme Ruffians” approaches a rockabilly – almost skiffle – vibe. Joyce’s cymbals and Marr’s jingle jangles almost merge into each other, leaving the room for Rourke’s bass playing to take a centre stage musically, rarely true for the bass player. His performance is so high and elastic that it pretty much serves as the melody for the song. This would be the most unusual thing on the track if it wasn’t for Morrissey own backing vocals, whose tremolos reveal themselves towards the end of the track to the point that a cassette tape stops the record.
Apart from the overall tones and tempo on display, “I Want the One I Can’t Have” – which begins with Doors-like helicopter blades – is like the mirror of “You Owe Me Everything.” Compared to the latter’s adolescent dirge, here the vocal moves around throughout as opposed to being segregated to “the low moments” and “the high moments”, and the lyrics here on unrequited lusting youth are akin to an Alinskian tale of Haves and Have Nots, only instead here they are for actual relationships as opposed to class ones (but just like “Still Ill”, the political and economic reading is never far away). It’s an interesting lyrical display, but also interesting is Morrissey’s decision in “What She Said” is the decision to come at the topic from a female perspective. Many people have claimed that the song in question is about Morrissey’s own upbringing, and that the “tattooed boy from Birkenhead” is Johnny Marr. But as I don’t know the lives of either Morrissey or a teenage girl, I’ll simply say that the short length of this song and the somewhat simple subject matter could make people not notice how much is going on musically. There is the straight up rock of Marr’s chord changes (though I doubt they would be power chords, given his playing style) and the drums by Joyce are really on a literal roll that barely break for the whole three minutes, particularly as the end goes into full on meltdown mode.
We then move into the centrepiece of the album – though the last track of Side A – with the mini climax of “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore.” Starting with a bright riff whose rhythm it never really returns to, it suggests that the central character has been pushed to point where they can’t go back. The tremolo notes and bright bass playing are noteworthy, but here it is Morrissey’s show. Typically the passionate cynical in a Wilde manner, this is a track where he is at his most empathetic, with some of his most poignate and – to use a wanky word here – layered, with lines like “Time’s tide will smother you” and “It was dark when I drove the point home.” But mainly the empathy comes by the narrator himself realising that we can never truly know another person’s emotions, we can only relate it to our own experience: I once put this song on in the car, and when those final lines “I’ve seen this happen, in other people’s live/and now it’s happening in mine,” I had a full on Louis CK experience.
It’s odd though that I can say a song called “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” is not the most humourless track on the album. More on that later.
Side A’s end might contain the most poignant lyrics, but they are not my favourite on the record. No, that goes to “Nowhere Fast,” which predates The Queen is Dead by being genuinely funny, and an indication that Morrissey already knows his public persona and is playing on it. Marr’s slides on this track are effortless (and look at him in this video. So cool), with the blips from Rourke’s bass and the triplet hits giving a locomotive vibe to the track that complements it perfectly. And, to top it all off, the single most Morrissey lyric to ever Morrissey:
And when I’m lying in my bed
I think about life
And I think about death
And neither one particularly appeals to me
It might not come across on paper, but trust me: this is funny.
Question: If a track is widely regarded as underrated, does that track still remain underrated? This is something I like to call the “Hey Bulldog problem,” but for many a Smith fan review could also apply “Well I Wonder”. I myself don’t consider this as one of my favourites from the album, but I do like how much of this couple’s narrative is conveyed in such a small amount of lyrics. And continuing my campaign to start the Rourke and Joyce Fan Club, I love how the beginning riff from the bass mirrors the rhythm that is going to come from Marr, and Joyce’s selective snare hits really do add to this tracks atmosphere.
But this then moves on to another high point of the album, the pretty much full on funk stylings of “Barbarism Begins at Home.” It’s odd for a band that put out a song that said to “hang the DJ” to make something this goddamn danceable, but I’m honestly surprised that the extended outro of Marr and Rourke’s impeccable interplay has not been sampled in some way. What’s less surprising is that a band with such a leftist streak would condemn a conservative attitude (at least at the time) by merely embodying it, with the repetition of “A crack on the head is what you get for asking” really making it difficult for me to come with a metaphor for its effectiveness without some more hitting imagery.
So now on to the final track. The Smiths song everyone seems to have an opinion on. Honestly I’m glad that its inclusion is placed as the finale for this, because it gave me time to gather for my own opinions. So here goes; I don’t like “Meat is Murder” very much…on this album. Actually, my main problem of this song is that the title song on Meat is Murder is not even the best version of “Meat is Murder.” Compared to the dirge on the album, with Morrissey going for a more haunted ghost feel, the passionate and angry way that he sings this song on live versions (both with The Smiths and his own shows) can be outright chilling. On this recording I still do really like the intros bizarre use of reverse(?) piano that then moves on to a very passionate riff. The melody is memorable and anthemic, and Johnny Marr’s playing is at its most dissonant and chilling next to “Suffer Little Children.”
But the problem on that final track is Morrissey. People like to point at his persona and call him out as pretentious or dour, or just an outright dick. It’s not I don’t think he can be all those things, I have a consciousness after all, but sometimes I think these claims can be an exaggeration or outright misunderstanding of The Smiths and Morrissey himself (particularly some of the racism accusations). But on this recording he is the humourless person that his detractors say he is. It’s not necessarily the noble message – I guess my full disclosure should be that I’m a meat eater – but that on all things animal rights he rarely ever finds the humour in the topic (“The Bullfighter Dies” from his most recent solo album being an off-the-top-of-my-head exception, bitter though it may be). I think that the idea for putting this at the end as that the album as a whole would have earned the earnestness, and depending on your disposition it might, but I guess it didn’t for me. Also, did this have to be six minutes? This song has a fair amount of fat on it.
You know, despite that final bit of negativity, and the fact I came to this review thinking I was going to give this a lower placement than their debut album, I’ve come out of this actually wanting to place it higher. While The Smiths is the more consistent album, I do honestly think the highs of this record are much higher. “The Headmaster Ritual,” “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore,” “Nowhere Fast” and “Barbarism Begins at Home” are all stone cold classics to me. There is more variety of instrumentations and styles, something that would be continued on their next albums, and until the title track I appreciate just how much more serious this record can be compared to the rest of their oeuvre, and how much it pulls off.
And despite his reputation as the contrarian and misanthrope, I think that Morrissey and the team honestly took the “humourless” criticisms of the time to heart. Why would I think this? Follow to the next record.
What did you think of the album, though?
The Smiths Album Rankings
- Meat is Murder
- The Smiths