The poignancy wrapped up in the title of Morrissey’s landmark tenth solo studio album could never ring more potently than within our current war-torn age of rising military tensions and political unrest.
On ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business‘ Morrissey bookends a troubled period in his own personal life, of ill health and cancelled tours, with an album of distinct clarity in its message, acting as the perfect aural compliment to his recent bare all autobiography.
His solo career to date has been met with critically acclaimed consistency, while commercial peaks in debut album ‘Viva Hate‘ and 1994’s ‘Vauxhall and I‘, once described by Morrissey as a potentially unsurpassable feat of musical accomplishment, provide ample evidence that the legendary Smiths frontman and all round purveyor of resplendently self-deprecating melancholy still has plenty to say when he sees fit to decant his inimitable political and societal observations into song.
The opener and title track begins with foreboding guitar distortion, before Morrissey’s unwaveringly strong vocals, despite his advancing age, chime in with several unsubtle swipes at perceived governmental flaws in the lines, “You must not tamper with arrangement, work hard and sweetly pay your taxes”, offering an immediate nod to the satirical tongue in cheek musings we’ve come to expect of him down the years.
Moving on from this arresting direct address to the listener, alluding to the blemishes of capitalist government regime, Morrissey returns to his notoriously theatrical literary plot device of death on the beat poet referencing and oxymoron aplenty ‘Neal Cassidy Drops Dead’, encompassing wrenching power chords interspersed with piercing guitar solos before an unexpected Spanish acoustic guitar interlude signifies the refreshing diversity yet to come on this explorative record.
A defiantly lengthy rebuke to modern day obsession with over assertiveness and masculinity on ‘I’m Not a Man’ has Morrissey distancing himself from such banal male stereotypes, and attempting to create an image of himself as an outsider and altogether separate creation. Generalisations of what it takes to be a true man come across in biting and arguably controversial quips such as, “So very manly of you, you are the soldier, who won’t get much older, you are the slow Joe, who signed up to go”, met with, “Well if this is what it takes to describe, I’m not a man”, all the while played over a paradoxically soothing strings section before a crescendo building finale offers an over-ridingly haunting effect.
Chopped guitar strums and pulsating bass welcome in ‘Istanbul’ as a near punk-fuelled track describing a father breathlessly searching for his wayward son within the hardened grasp of the Turkish city, while spritely flamenco rhythms provide the contrasting instrumental accompaniment to ‘Earth Is The Loneliest Planet’, with its morose and doom-laden cries of, “Earth is the cruelest place you will never understand”, emphasising the fact that Morrissey hasn’t altered his pessimistic view of the world too much since 2009’s ‘Years Of Refusal‘.
The fictional tale of a father who cruelly shouted at his daughter, “If you don’t get three As, as far as your father is concerned you’re dead”, on ‘Staircase At The University’ underpins a genuinely harrowing account of a girl driven to death by the overwhelming pressures society places on our young generation to succeed academically. The track showcases Morrissey’s penchant for dissecting shocking subject matter and, despite the disturbing narrative, he’s at his rhythmically crooning best in what is perhaps the album’s climax in terms of the musical cohesion of his newly assembled backing group.
Clocking in at just over two minutes, ‘The Bullfighter Dies’ is one of the few low points on the record, depicting a vague animal rights morality tale of a bullfighter’s death which goes largely unnoticed to the tune of namedropping a variety of Spanish locations, although ‘Kiss Me a Lot’ rescues the brief lull in pacing with trumpet infused minimalist romanticism harking back to some of Morrissey’s most enduring works in its endearing simplicity.
The outrageously sinister ‘Smiler With Knife’ comprises a deft piano and acoustic-led ballad where the protagonist almost welcomes the impending moment of death as an act explained by, “If such things weren’t meant to be, then they would never come to me”, in a most outlandish near celebration of a murderous act where the victim wishes to be dead.
A full blown slow burning acoustic ballad incorporates penultimate track ‘Mountjoy’ before closer ‘Oboe Concerto’ and its Joy Division echoing bassline intro leaves a memorable lyrical imprint in the mind of the listener through the immortal line, “The older generation have tried, sighed and died, which pushed me to their place in the queue”.
‘World Peace…’ exists as an example to more prolific bands and artists that releasing an album only when there is actually something worthwhile to say can prove most fruitful. The record tackles a vast range of worldly issues head on and is an undoubtedly intriguing, insightful, and at times controversial collection of songs, each with an individual personality all of their own.
It expands on a bread and butter rock and roll template and infuses it with a rich tapestry of sounds that will have many fans hoping Morrissey doesn’t drift off quietly with the older generation anytime soon.