TEASE TORMENT TANTALIZE A 30Th AnniveRsARY TRiBuTe To The sMiThs’ DeBuT
1 Kevin Devine Reel Around The Fountain (6:02) 2 Mother Falcon You’ve Got Everything Now (5:36) 3 Field Mouse Miserable Lie (2:47) 4 Jaymay Pretty Girls Make Graves (2:51) 5 Blackbird Blackbird The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (1:43) 6 Brothertiger This Charming Man (3:27) 7 Male Bonding Still Ill (3:13) 8 Faded Paper Figures Hand In Glove (3:16) 9 Seapony What Difference Does It Make? (3:43) 10 The Night VI I Don’t Owe You Anything (3:44) 11 Soft Metals Suffer Little Children (5:24) 12 13 14
Bonus Tracks Young Statues Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want (2:14) Heidemann Bigmouth Strikes Again (3:06) Our Broken Garden I Don’t Owe You Anything (5:22)
Maudlin yet magnificent: The kings of indie still charming three decades on Punk, new wave, post punk, alternative. As the 1970s turned into the 1980s, there was a huge surge of rock music activity, as the bands who had lit the flame of revolution at CBGBs in New York and at the Roxy in London, saw their spark catch fire transatlantically. But if there was an explosion in styles, there was also a widespread spirit of autonomy and independence. Even if you signed to a major – Patti Smith at Arista, the Clash at CBS – there was still a powerful sense that notions of individuality could be preserved even in the face of the industry moguls. No band personified the spirit of indie more than the Smiths, that Manchester four-piece who strode between the jagged shards of punk politics and the ideological posturing of the new wave arts school, to produce a sound that was both fay and ethereal, rhythmically compelling but memorably melodic. Yet their unique brand of maudlin pop was no less sharp and insightful, with its smartly drawn portraits of urban decline, snapshots of a post-industrial landscape realised through the weary nostalgia of Steven Morrissey’s lyrics and the crisp, cascading riffs of guitarist Johnny Marr, capably supported by bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce. From where did that well-earned by Rough Trade, at first an imjust as the demand for picWhen owner Geoff Travis dent outlets – Stiff, also in challenge the domination signing.
indie tag arise? Well, for a start, the band were snapped up portant record store in the English capital, which had grown ture sleeve, punk 45s had swollen from around 1976. launched a label, too, around the time that other indepenLondon, and Factory in Manchester – were beginning to of the major monoliths, the Smiths proved to be their key
Yet the Smiths did not fit in that easily to those musical times; they also displayed a distinct individualism. Morrissey’s blank verse harked back to earlier times in his home city: the cotton mills, Irish immigration, Catholicism, and the rising tide of the Angry Young Man a quarter of a century before. Marr’s richly-layered musicality separated the group’s soundtrack from the hammers and arrows of punk or the arty abstractions of the new wave battalions. And Morrissey celebrated not the revolution of the masses tearing down the marquee of an over-bloated music business. Instead his tales were deeply personal, the diary sketches of an outsider: divided from Englishness by his Republican tendencies, suspicious of conventional romance with his ambivalent sexuality, deeply doubtful of his spiritual impulses when the shadow of the priesthood still cast its taint on his experience.
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The Morrissey and Marr project emerged at the end of a long phase, just as the British Invasion effect was running out of steam. The Smiths caught the imagination of a particular and discerning clique on the American frontier – campus communities still hungry for literate English music, college radio still transfixed by shimmering guitars and alienated poetry – and the band established their cult presence from East Coast to West Coast. Thirty years on from the band’s eponymous debut album in 1984, this new tribute reflects that enduring mark. It is some considerable time since the band ploughed their own furrow, composed, recorded and performed together. But at least two generations of rockers have seen this extraordinary combo, with the most ordinary of names, inspire their visions, tweak their creative dials, and send them into rehearsal spaces, the back rooms of bars, out on the road and into the studio. That streak of determined independence, in style and attitude, persists. So, an American homage to a Mancunian phenomenon, the songs from that gleaming slice of monochrome vinyl reborn and reshaped. Morrissey may have gone his separate way – he’s closer now to the Mexican Angelenos than the Whalley Rangers of his own once favoured northern suburbs – and Marr has taken on so many guises, from Modest Mouse’s mouse guest strummer to faculty member. But the alchemy of the original quartet, in all their original, miserable magnificence, still shines and, on this celebration of a landmark release, the essence of those charming men is deliciously rekindled.
Simon Warner Lecturer, journalist and author of Text and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture
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snapshots of a post-industrial landscape realised through the weary nostalgia of Steven Morrissey’s lyrics and the crisp, cascading r i ff s o f g u i t a r i s t J o h n n y Marr, capably supported by bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce
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Tease Torment Tantalize: A 30th Anniversary Tribute To The smiths’ Debut Produced by Jim sampas executive Producer: George sampas co-Produced by David Greenberg Mastered by Ron skinner at heading north cover Photography by Kim Diefendorf Additonal Photography by Tony sampas liner notes by simon Warner Design by David Greenberg [product]
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