release date: Mar. 20, 2006
format: cd
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,22]
producer: Tony Visconti
label: Attack Records - nationality: UK
Track highlights: 2. "Dear God Please Help Me" - 3. "You Have Killed Me" - 4. "The Youngest Was the Most Loved" - 8. "I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero Now" - 10. "To Me You Are a Work of Art" - 11. "I Just Want to See the Boy Happy"
8th studio album by Morrissey released on Attack, a sub-label of Sanctuary Records. It features 1970s legendary (Bowie) producer Tony Visconti, and Morrissey's co-writers Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte are both back on the majority of the tracks, but the album is also the last studio album featuring longtime co-writer Alain Whyte, who has been writing music with Morrissey ever since 1990, and who has written music for 6 of the tracks on this album. Five of the tracks were co-written with guitarist Jesse Tobias who would eventually replace Whyte as regular part of Morrissey's backing band.
The style is not that different from his previous albums, although, it may be slightly more orchestrated, which in my mind isn't really an improvement. Morrissey's fragile lyrical output sometimes sounds like a small boat caught in a storm at open sea. The album was Morrissey's third album to top the albums chart list in the UK.
[ allmusic.com, 3 / 5, Rolling Stone 3,5 / 5, Blender 4 / 5, The Guardian 5 / 5 stars ]
