When Morrissey called out to those present at his concert in Berlin’s Tempodrom in 2025, “Take care of your country, take care of your language,” many would have liked to stick their index fingers in their ears and sing LALALALA loudly. The artist’s statements that Hitler was actually a socialist and that Berlin was the rape capital of Europe rang too loudly. Oh, Moz! My generation and the two or three after me cannot forget the sweet childhood pain you gave us. Steaming teacups in hand, we absorbed your evilness poured into songs, found comfort in your vocal arabesques contrasting with the guitar pop.
It was all fun and helped us get through bad weather and having to sit around in stuffy classrooms. In short: it was relevant. Not your new album. After a six-year break in publication, it not only appears, no, it overtakes us. The worthy producer Joe Chiccarelli recorded it in the south of France, probably with a few interruptions, because “from a single source” sounds different. There are twelve tracks, at least half of them boring, and I can say that I REALLY tried to distill the old magic, the heartwarming. In vain.
There are very nice lines, like in “Boulevard”: “Walking as if both legs are broken.” And there are reminiscences of other artists (David Bowie in “Amazonas”), but your sound of someone who is constantly insulted always overflows everything with the big ICHICHICH. Your voice is as beautiful as ever, but a little fragile here and there – just like your image. Threadbareness in a double sense characterizes your late work and this album too. You can’t hear all of this anymore without looking for references to the trivialization of pedo sex, nationalism and the glorification of Brexit. The light, enjoyable thing is gone forever. Unfortunately.
This review appears in Musikexpress 3/2026.
