All You Need Is Me: Morrissey @ The Warner Theatre
Woe Is He: Morrissey in concert. (Not at Saturday's Warner Theatre show.)
Still, I’d always heard he was a superb live act. The combination of the release of Refusal — Moz’s strongest effort in at least a decade-an-a-half, say the experts, and one that sounded sublime to my novice ears — and the glorious Warner Theatre was too enticing to resist.
The gig did not disappoint. Sashaying in front of a giant stage backdrop with “REFUSAL” stenciled over the pecs of a shirtless muscleman, the Pope of Mope lived up to his reputation for elegance, excellence, and sexual ambiguity. The set was a potent 95-minute, 21-song cocktail: half the new album, a handful of Smiths chestnuts, a well-curated assortment from his two-decade solo catalogue, and a cover of the Buzzcocks’ “You Say You Don’t Love Me.” Through it all, the star’s rich vocal timbre rang startlingly clear, seeming to float atop the muscular crunch of his five-piece band. There was none of the stage-crashing that I’d always heard was part of the Morrissey ritual, but he did shake a lot of hands. “Good evening, Squashington!” he said, looking approvingly at the crush as he made his entrance.
The crisply-paced gig subverted the nostalgia-enabling structure favored by many veteran songwriters, front-loading the oldest standards and weaving the new songs throughout the entirety of the program. “This Charming Man” was well-placed as a vigorous, bouncy opener. “I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear,” crooned the blue-jeans-clad balladeer. Somehow I figured — based on nothing except maybe the You Are the Quarry album cover — he’d be more of a clothes horse.
“How Soon Is Now?” the biggest gun in the Smiths, er, canon, felt premature 15 minutes into the gig, but the performance was epic, angular and powerful. It’s not that plenty of players — Moz’s own longtime sideman Boz Borrer, for instance — couldn’t replicate Johnny Marr’s shimmering guitar part; it’s just that nobody thought to do it like that before Marr. Mozz effectively handed the show over to the band at the end of the number, lying prone in front of the drum kit, not quite in a fetal position. “Are you disappointed?” he asked afterwards, milking the triumph.
He’d already tossed one shirt into the crowd by this point, and the near-riot it caused near the lip of the stage brought back memories of my prior visit to the Warner, to see Usher on Election Night. Though the two performers would seem to have little in common, each disrobed onstage the same number of times: twice. Moz, mercifully, restricted his exposure to the waist-up; though his stripping was much funnier than Usher’s, in that it bore no relation at all to the tone of the music.
Morrissey, it seems, has always been one of those sex symbols who doth protest too much, like the Jonas Brothers with their goofy chastity rings. The shirt Moz donned after his first peel employed what must be highly advanced and expensive sartorial technology to maintain a perfectly heart-shaped sweat stain on his back for the next hour.
A hypnotic mid-show version of “Death of a Disco Dancer” that resolved itself into a phased drone was another showstopper, but the new song that followed it, “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore,” sat easily next to the Smiths classic. “The Loop, ” a limber rockabilly number featuring Solomon Walker on upright bass, was another winner.
Morrissey could give a master class in stage banter: After “The World Is Full of Crashing Bores,” he declared, “Your kindness is appreciated, and so are other things, appreciated. I can’t remember what they are.” Even his gibberish drips with acerbic sophistication! “I’m Okay by Myself” closed the set proper with a bass solo and another shirt-toss. Tough call which one seemed more excessive.
Returning for an encore— the tour premiere of “Last First of the Gang to Die,” Moz asked “That was all very painless, wasn’t it?” I wouldn't say painless, exactly. But in the words of another singer who came to prominence in the 80s — one who has nothing at all in common with Morrissey other than an easily-ridiculed public persona and a fondness for performing in blue jeans — it hurt so good.