Morrissey's new album is out this week. It proves he is still the man we need, says Mark Smith

There I am: 15 years old, thinking: is it me? and the music that’s playing is Morrissey. Now here I am: 55 years old, thinking: is it me? and the music that’s playing is Morrissey. Move on! you say, he is not what we was and neither are you. But I’ve listened to the new album and bring you news: I still need him. We still need him. Let me tell you what it’s like.

But before the guitars start and Steven Patrick sings for us, a bit of context. Morrissey’s last album was I Am Not a Dog on a Chain in 2020, after which he struggled to find a record label. There were two albums’ worth of material recorded but no sign of it being released and the suspicion was that, in our weird, angry age, his opinions made him unacceptable and unsignable. Some seemed to think the man who wrote Margaret on a Guillotine was Right-Wing (gasp) but if you think that, you haven’t been paying attention at the back and even if he is, who cares. Let him sing.

Fortunately, after the statues were thrown in the water and the words far-right and fascist were thrown at people you didn’t agree with, common sense started to prevail, as it always does, and Morrissey signed with Sire records, part of Warner, and we have the new album Make-Up is a Lie. You may have heard the singles from the album already, Notre-Dame and the title track, but do not judge the album by those whatever you do. For some reason, Morrissey never chooses the best tracks to release as singles which means you always have to wait for the album for the really good stuff.

Among the best of the good stuff is Boulevard, which some will say is the most Smithsian of his new material. Back then, in the 80s, Morrissey sang of homes that smothered and threatened and streets and drunken underpasses that offered something else, sometimes dangerous (“driving in your car, I never, never want to go home”) and in Boulevard, here he is again, out on the road “walking as if both legs were broken, I made it to you” and sympathising with a nameless someone who’s spat at and walked over. This’ll be the song, to add to all the others, that the bullied boys and the different boys and the lonely boys will love.

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But given where we are now – Morrissey is 66 years old – it’s inevitable that quite of a few of the songs are contemplations on ageing and time. The opening track, You’re Right, It’s Time, is a reflection on mortality, and possible diminishing relevance (“I cast no reflection in the mirror now”). You can feel the effect of time as well in Notre-Dame in which he says a “cold hand just touched me”, although the song turns on the idea that the cathedral may have been burned down deliberately and the truth hushed up. It’s the sort of thing that will not help those who have cooled on Morrissey to warm to him again.

Time is also ticking and disappearing in another of the finest tracks on the album, Many Icebergs Ago, which I think I’m right in saying is the second time Morrissey has referenced Dundee in his work. The first occasion, famously, was in Panic (“there’s panic on the streets of Carlisle, Dublin, Dundee, Humberside”) and this time round it’s The Dundee Arms, one of a succession of pubs in which he upbraids himself for drinking too much and wasting too many opportunities (“I begun to grow old, many Merlots ago”). But as usual – and this is why we who love him love him so much – there is hope of an escape route, somewhere, with someone (“I’m different with you, I was waiting for light, I dreamt of a dream”).

By this point, you may be thinking: where are the laughs? But do not fear: they’re in there. Headache, for example, is the lightest of the tracks and is an amusing riff on marriage (“with this headache I thee wed, and thus pronounce you dead” ) and with its quick piano and light guitar, reminded me of his 90s album Vauxhall and I (would I say Vauxhall and I is Morrissey’s greatest album? I would). The mood is also considerably lighter with The Night Pop Dropped, which is Morrissey’s way of saying how much music matters to him, you, me, most of us; “how empty our lives would be if we had never known,” he says. Agreed.

Photo by Steve Rapport/Getty Images

The other songs on the album take us back to some of Morrissey’s familiar obsessions. Zoom Zoom The Little Boy lists some of the animals that humans kill and maim and eat. Kerching Kerching focuses on the corruption of success and money (“I remember a small boy and I wonder what went wrong?”) And Lester Bangs takes a swipe at critics (the last time he did that, he said of them: “very funny, very witty, but very lonely, and below the belt is shrivelled and small” which is rude). Lester Bangs also features reference number two for Allen Ginsberg on top of reference number two for Dundee. Who’s counting? I am.

What will the album do in the end though, what does it mean? It means that the ones who condemn Morrissey or ignore him or misunderstand him will continue to condemn him or ignore him or misunderstand him without ever listening to Make-Up is a Lie, which is their right. But it also means that the ones who love him, the ones who filled the O2 Arena for his show last Saturday, the ones who listen when they’re 15 and when they’re 55, will love him more. Make-Up is a Lie doesn’t give us a new version of Morrissey – why would it? how could it? – but it is a reminder that no one writes like him or sings like him or hates like him or loves like him. I said at the start that I would tell you what it’s like and here it is: we need him.

Make-Up is a Lie is released on Friday.

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