The past two years have not been kind to Morrissey. Cancelled tours due to illness, plagued by seemingly never ending battles of illness, band mates and former colleagues arguing over who spread what illness on tour.
The man is, dare I say, Still Ill leading up to what should have been a triumph return preceding his first new album in five years.
The staggered release of singles makes the first half of the album quite an easy ride, mixing a delicious blend of melancholy pop with an unusual but quickly accepted acoustic flare and more rockier tracks harkening back to Your Arsenal and Southpaw Grammar.
Whilst the opener and Earth is the Loneliest Planet are your standard Morrissey, Staircase at the University offers a bizarre anthem aimed at what I think, is the American campus scene, whilst Neal Cassady Drops Dead is the rockiest track on the album, featuring layers of guitars and effects in a quick and pacey showcase.
The biggest letdown of the first half is the overindulgent and insanely long I'm Not a Man, which spends the first minute and a half with background noises before spending another six poking fun at your stereotypical geezer meat eater...actually, the damning of meat eater comes on the last verse, sort of an after thought.
Unlike previous long Morrissey efforts like Life is a Pigsty, This Is Not Your Country and The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils; I'm Not a Man sounds over indulged and stretched beyond capacity. There's a decent three, maybe four minute gem in here, buried beneath the final wailing and engorging on soundscapes.
The second half of the album is largely unknown but arguably has the stronger material. Yes, you get the familiar, short and sweet PETA anthem The Bullfighter Dies, but immediately follows is Kiss Me a Lot, easily the most radio-friendly track on the album, easy on the ears but with enough bite and edge to not confuse your senses.
It's also here you get the two best songs lyrically on the album. In stark contrast to one another, Mountjoy is Morrissey's tour of the Irish prison, making it into a literal hell on earth, with a nice throwback to his recent hatred of judges whilst Kick the Bride Down the Aisle is the laugh-out-loud moment the album unexpectedly delivers. Rarely do lyrics truly make me giggle on purpose, but there's one featuring a certain animal that did, so kudos.
Lyrically, the album on the whole however and, it's weird to say this, is quite weak. Yes, you get your two hits mentioned above, but on the whole, there's a lot of repeated lines which aren't unique or hooks, but instead sound like placeholders. The Bullfighter Dies is short and sweet musically, but lyrically, it's too simplistic, no depth or wit; a literal death wish on custom in two minutes.
Whilst I really, really like Kiss Me a Lot, the actual line "Kiss Me a Lot" is sung over and over, but hey, maybe that's the point. Again, closer Oboe Concerto's last two lines are repeated, although again, it's probably intentional more than lazy.
The other problem and this tends to be one with any artist with a large discography are the songs that sound a tad too similar to one another, taking Paint a Vulgar Picture to new found realms of irony.
The most obvious being Istanbul, which is basically First of the Gang to Die...if it was set in Istanbul. Actually, that probably does it nowhere near enough justice as Istanbul again offers slight tweaks and new instrumentation not seen in a Morrissey album before. Again, the stripped back beginning of I'm Not a Man bears more than a resemblance to the stripped back entirety of This Is Not Your Country, although the former does morph into thankfully, something different.
On the whole; World Peace Is None of Your Business is, what many would hope for, the return Morrissey deserves. It does have the issues that have plagued his solo career in recent years, it's a bit too overindulgent in parts, lyrically, dare I say, repetitive and lazy.
But it's the slight tweak in music, the visceral and visual stories in the songs, the voice which seems to get better with age that keep the record together and unique in a sea of familiarity and averageness.
It's not the stunning return as You Are the Quarry was a decade ago, but for now; it's more than enough.
7/10
H
@Retcon_Nation
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