![]() ![]() ![]() Each of You Are the Quarry's 12 songs contains an equally delicious line. When Morrissey humorously mocks Americans with, "You wonder why in Estonia they say, 'Hey, you, big fat pig, you fat pig,'" we laugh because most Americans don't know what Estonia is, let alone where it lies on the Baltic fat Americans travel to Tucson not Talinn. Yet those weeping synthetic strings (violins and cellos use catgut and horsehair, by the way) flash "I miss you" in garish American neon. Even those who've never choked for air while riding the 15 down Fleet Street can read the sarcasm without a spider map. Obviously, a "discoloured dark brown staircase," a "slate grey Victorian sky," and "the taste of the Thames" fail to paint a whimsical postcard of home. Similarly, when he puts his hands on the hips of Liverpool and Hull to slowdance with England in "Come Back to Camden", the lyrics should be taken with the whole of the Winsford Rock salt mine. "If I see someone wearing fur I ask them to take it out of view." In the same interview, he pointed out that synthetic shoes "look silly" and confessed to wearing leather footwear, as there's "no sensible alternative." The first scenario seems unlikely and makes for a comedic envisioning (At the Savoy: "Excuse me, madam, but that rabbit shawl must be taken out of public view"), while the second statement reiterates that Morrissey never forsakes his role as photo-ready icon and dapper fashionist for a few cows. In an epitomatory 1989 interview with Greenscene Magazine, Morrissey castigated those in chinchilla coats. Laden with brilliant contradictions, press baiting rouse, dark comedy, and real human complexity, You Are the Quarry simply stands as the most entertaining and lushly melodic work of Morrissey's solo career, one of the most singular figures in Western pop culture from the last 20 years. The record is not an anti-American treatise, an encomium to England, an epistolary revelation, or even a bold comeback, and magazines who claim such are lazy and reading off the kit. The trend continues with You Are the Quarry. Everyone from the Warlock Pinchers to the Windsors levied opinions at his persona. The media and his audience have consistently misinterpreted Morrissey's lyrics and statements. Consider the "I" in his songs to represent "Morrissey" with peril. Bitter, witty, hypocritical, contradictory, self-aware, sardonic, and nostalgic, Morrissey's persona- in person, or in song- is never one-dimensional or quickly read. One could lob three of those labels at Steven Morrissey, the most unremittingly Albion presence in modern Los Angeles, but he remains an entirely unique breed of Englishman in home or Hollywood. ![]()
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