New Morrissey: Ringleader of the Tormenters leaked
03-21-06, 04:02 PM
#1
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New Morrissey: Ringleader of the Tormenters leaked
Checked this out and have to say it's back to slumpville for old Moz. I was looking forward to this because it was produced by Tony Visconti. There's a lot of songs about death, God and wretched humans (surprise). But it's all so maudlin (surprise) it makes You are the Quarry sound like The Queen is Dead. Disturbing imagery includes Moz describing forcing himself between God's legs. The seven minute Life is Pigsty is too much to take.
03-21-06, 04:06 PM
#2
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I've only listened to it once and don't think it's as good as "Quarry" (and I wasn't really blown away by that album either). I read a review for "Ringleaders" that said this was Morrissey's best since "Vauxhall and I" which makes me think I need to listen closer. But my initial thoughts are slight disappointment. Actually, I was reminded of "Kill Uncle" at times and that's NOT good.
03-21-06, 04:12 PM
#3
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THe Observer, 5 Stars
Morrissey, Ringleader of the Tormentors
Please please please let him get what he wants, begs Paul Morley: this is the troubled wordsmith's greatest solo album yet
Sunday February 19, 2006
When Morrissey sings, you don't necessarily hear violins. You hear supernatural disgust, sublime selfishness, pathological vulnerability, aching bones, solemn petulance, a numbed survivor's vituperative testimony to catastrophes that are scarcely distinguishable - but nothing particularly smooth and consoling. Funnily enough, on his latest album, you hear a lot of violins, soaring above kingdoms of the non-living, embracing sad stories twice told, shadowing Morrissey's commitment to thoroughly explaining himself without giving anything away. He must be in love, if only in a hateful sort of way.
Ringleader is the story of a life all his other songs have only hinted at - it has a kind of exhilarating, intimate Blood on the Tracks suddenness the way it appears after years of him never quite out-doing his early classic work and sometimes seemingly trapped inside his own myth. From the day he was born, through the streets of Manchester, out into the mean world of sinister places and demanding people, to the day he never actually died - it's all here. Fans of Morrissey, and maybe a few enemies, will have all their prayers answered - a whole album of songs that rock, drone and swing in the way his best songs - Smiths or not - do between the strangely familiar and the completely unfamiliar. A coherent collection dedicated to love and death, to sex and killing, to gravely arranged copulation, to festering flamboyantly, to having Ennio Morricone add lurid, stately ambience and nudge him to the edge of the epic, to perverse tenderness, to ecstatic despair, to soiled optimism and elaborate pessimism, to a future that ends with a long, long sleep. This is the album where Morrissey tells us - and there are those who've been waiting for this moment for 23 years - that he's 'spreading your legs with mine in between'. It's horribly beautiful.
As if it is us he loves for loving him again, he rewards us with 12 wilfully harrowing songs crowded with verbal brilliance. Twelve songs about ordeals - and love is the greatest ordeal of all for Morrissey, something else that will die - to be endured. Songs with titles like 'Dear God, Please Help Me', 'You Have Killed Me', 'Life is a Pigsty', 'To Me You Are a Work if Art', 'At Last I am Born'.
His existential disarray, his triumphant agony, his harsh fault finding, his pitiless wit - which at times can have the aura on record of stale air being breathed over and over again - is so spectacularly presented by producer Tony Visconti that we end up not just with a Morrissey masterpiece - in some ways The Morrissey Masterpiece - but also a Visconti masterpiece.
As soon as the album begins, the listener is plunged into Bowie's bass-heavy, electrically anxious 'Man Who Sold the World', as if that is a remote, alien country that Morrissey can then sail away from, perhaps in search of something bleaker, perhaps to find the lost continent of Presley.
Visconti promotes him, reasonably enough, as a surreal, cranky pop vaudevillian. As if he considers that Morrissey must surely be kidding when the singer gets particularly truculent, he sticks a load of kids behind him as backing singers. He's not afraid to frame Morrissey as merely a weirdly distracted entertainer, not so much an awkward, slightly shifty rock singer as a sighing, tormented crooner compelled to display his psychic wounds as if the world depends on it. Morrissey has never sung better, not so much soulfully as with an emotional elegance that consistently snaps the icy, burning words to attention.
Visconti treats him as a handsome Latino melodramatist suffering from a kitsch surfeit of imagination as much as a damp, exiled Mancunian miserabilist with a cold tendency to nostalgic self-obsession. Ultimately, Visconti helps transform Morrissey's dogged oddness and phenomenal fussiness into pure magic. Love him or hate him, there's no one better at loving and hating.
Morrissey, Ringleader of the Tormentors
Please please please let him get what he wants, begs Paul Morley: this is the troubled wordsmith's greatest solo album yet
Sunday February 19, 2006
When Morrissey sings, you don't necessarily hear violins. You hear supernatural disgust, sublime selfishness, pathological vulnerability, aching bones, solemn petulance, a numbed survivor's vituperative testimony to catastrophes that are scarcely distinguishable - but nothing particularly smooth and consoling. Funnily enough, on his latest album, you hear a lot of violins, soaring above kingdoms of the non-living, embracing sad stories twice told, shadowing Morrissey's commitment to thoroughly explaining himself without giving anything away. He must be in love, if only in a hateful sort of way.
Ringleader is the story of a life all his other songs have only hinted at - it has a kind of exhilarating, intimate Blood on the Tracks suddenness the way it appears after years of him never quite out-doing his early classic work and sometimes seemingly trapped inside his own myth. From the day he was born, through the streets of Manchester, out into the mean world of sinister places and demanding people, to the day he never actually died - it's all here. Fans of Morrissey, and maybe a few enemies, will have all their prayers answered - a whole album of songs that rock, drone and swing in the way his best songs - Smiths or not - do between the strangely familiar and the completely unfamiliar. A coherent collection dedicated to love and death, to sex and killing, to gravely arranged copulation, to festering flamboyantly, to having Ennio Morricone add lurid, stately ambience and nudge him to the edge of the epic, to perverse tenderness, to ecstatic despair, to soiled optimism and elaborate pessimism, to a future that ends with a long, long sleep. This is the album where Morrissey tells us - and there are those who've been waiting for this moment for 23 years - that he's 'spreading your legs with mine in between'. It's horribly beautiful.
As if it is us he loves for loving him again, he rewards us with 12 wilfully harrowing songs crowded with verbal brilliance. Twelve songs about ordeals - and love is the greatest ordeal of all for Morrissey, something else that will die - to be endured. Songs with titles like 'Dear God, Please Help Me', 'You Have Killed Me', 'Life is a Pigsty', 'To Me You Are a Work if Art', 'At Last I am Born'.
His existential disarray, his triumphant agony, his harsh fault finding, his pitiless wit - which at times can have the aura on record of stale air being breathed over and over again - is so spectacularly presented by producer Tony Visconti that we end up not just with a Morrissey masterpiece - in some ways The Morrissey Masterpiece - but also a Visconti masterpiece.
As soon as the album begins, the listener is plunged into Bowie's bass-heavy, electrically anxious 'Man Who Sold the World', as if that is a remote, alien country that Morrissey can then sail away from, perhaps in search of something bleaker, perhaps to find the lost continent of Presley.
Visconti promotes him, reasonably enough, as a surreal, cranky pop vaudevillian. As if he considers that Morrissey must surely be kidding when the singer gets particularly truculent, he sticks a load of kids behind him as backing singers. He's not afraid to frame Morrissey as merely a weirdly distracted entertainer, not so much an awkward, slightly shifty rock singer as a sighing, tormented crooner compelled to display his psychic wounds as if the world depends on it. Morrissey has never sung better, not so much soulfully as with an emotional elegance that consistently snaps the icy, burning words to attention.
Visconti treats him as a handsome Latino melodramatist suffering from a kitsch surfeit of imagination as much as a damp, exiled Mancunian miserabilist with a cold tendency to nostalgic self-obsession. Ultimately, Visconti helps transform Morrissey's dogged oddness and phenomenal fussiness into pure magic. Love him or hate him, there's no one better at loving and hating.
03-22-06, 08:20 AM
#6
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I don't like it much either. Definitely not nearly as good as Quarry. The songs lack any hooks or catchiness. Sounds like leftover songs that weren't good enough to make the last album.
03-22-06, 12:55 PM
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You guys really need to give it a few more listens! It's a wonderful, confident sounding album with plenty of surprises even after several listens. No hooks? What about In the Future...? Or The Youngest...? The songs sound NOTHING like anything on Quarry - there is a distinct lack of programmed percussion or synthesized strings and the production as a whole is less shiny. I reckon it could well be his finest solo effort to date...
03-22-06, 01:19 PM
#8
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Originally Posted by PBobcat
You guys really need to give it a few more listens! It's a wonderful, confident sounding album with plenty of surprises even after several listens. No hooks? What about In the Future...? Or The Youngest...? The songs sound NOTHING like anything on Quarry - there is a distinct lack of programmed percussion or synthesized strings and the production as a whole is less shiny. I reckon it could well be his finest solo effort to date...
I've listened to it 6+ times. I'm still not into it. Some of the songs really annoy me: At last I am born, Dear God Help Me and Life is a Pigsty. I'm a big fan from way back and this just doesn't do it for me.
03-22-06, 01:23 PM
#9
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Originally Posted by cdollaz
I don't like it much either. Definitely not nearly as good as Quarry. The songs lack any hooks or catchiness. Sounds like leftover songs that weren't good enough to make the last album.
03-22-06, 02:17 PM
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2nd listen while paying attention. This is a major letdown for me and not near his best work. There are two or three songs I really like, but most don't stand out. I'm still going to hope I change my mind 
03-23-06, 09:18 AM
#13
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I haven't heard it yet, but now that it's leaked I'll probably seek it out.
I learned my lesson from Quarry, though; if I decide to buy it, I'll just wait a few months after its initial release for the Super Deluxe Edition.
I learned my lesson from Quarry, though; if I decide to buy it, I'll just wait a few months after its initial release for the Super Deluxe Edition.
03-23-06, 07:58 PM
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Dear God is so off-putting, it takes a few songs to recover
04-07-06, 02:23 PM
#18
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I think it's a making of plus a few vids. They did that w/Quarry too but I found the sale price to make the special version not worth the extra $7 or $8.
Just price matched at Best Buy for $9.99.
Just price matched at Best Buy for $9.99.
