Six years after “I Am Not a Dog on a Chain,” the former Smiths frontman delivers his best album since Ringleader of the Tormentors in 2006.
When exactly did Morrissey’s last great album land? Probably on Ringleader of the Tormentors, his eighth album released twenty years ago, to be precise. After six years of silence on the record front due to repeated contractual entanglements with the music industry, punctuated only by the excellent single Rebels Without Applause (2022), the Manchester singer found refuge again at Sire Records (the famous label founded in 1966, another anniversary milestone), where he had kicked off his solo career.
Thus he announced, in the opening days of the new year, his musical comeback with the song Make-Up Is a Lie, which gives the title to his fourteenth solo album since the inaugural Viva Hate in 1988. You’re Right, It’s Time, as the opening track aptly suggests at a moment when his compatriot Robbie Williams literally sings Morrissey’s glory in the recent Britpop (2026). “Since Prince’s death, there’s only Morrissey, a musical genius,” he recently told M Le Magazine du Monde.
A voice still recognizable among a thousand and one conspiratorial visions of Notre-Dame
Recorded last year in France at La Fabrique, the renowned studio in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, with producer Joe Chiccarelli (The Strokes, The White Stripes, Weezer), who also steered the last three records by the former Smiths frontman, Make-Up Is a Lie is sprinkled with a few French touches. Thus the Paris reference in each couplet of the eponymous track (“I made my way to Paris/To stand before her gravestone”) and the ultra-referential Notre-Dame (with conspiratorial lyrics, suggesting the fire that ravaged it was not accidental).
But there are also the unexpected undertones of Ambroise Willaume, aka Sage, handling the string arrangements on the aforementioned Notre-Dame, and Keren Ann lending backing vocals on two tracks including the closing The Monsters of Pig Alley, the forthcoming single of dazzling clarity, composed by the returning guitarist Alan Whyte at the height of his inspiration.
Having regained his verve after two decades of uneven years, Morrissey thus presents twelve new songs that reconnect with his glorious past as a revered and rarely equaled lyricist (immense The Night Pop Dropped). “When you lift your pen/for Roxy Music and the Dolls/The Village Voice – it has no choice/It must laud your every word/How does it feel to be you, Lester Bangs?” he intones in the aptly titled Lester Bangs, with that voice recognizable a mile away, as if Morrissey were singing with a marshmallow in his mouth. The resurrection of the year.
Make-Up Is a Lie (Sire Records/WEA). Release on March 6. Live at the Zénith in Lille, on March 4.
