Strangeways, There They Came

The Guardian has a nice write-up on The Smiths' final album:

Being a Smiths fan in the 80s meant learning to accept the occasional disappointment. There was none greater than hearing their debut album for the first time.

Those of us who'd fallen in love with their first three singles, and had heard the legendary the Jensen and Peel sessions, were expecting nothing less than brilliance.

But John Porter's poppadom-flat production crushed the life out of their best songs. And only The Smiths could have been so wilful as to leave even better songs off that album (This Charming Man, Back To The Old House).

Meat Is Murder repeated the same tragedy, this time reduced to farce. You should have heard the almost holy hoedown that was Barbarism ... when it was played live. And where was Please, Please, Please?

I hardly ever play those first two Smiths' albums now. But I still love Hatful Of Hollow, The World Won't Listen and Louder Than Bombs - their de facto greatest hits.

The Queen Is Dead also stays stuck to the shelf. The problem is isn't that it's bad. In fact, it's just far too good, far too close to home and near the bone, flipping me right back to being 16 and suicidal. There are too many bad memories there.

The Smiths album I keep returning to, though, is Strangeways, Here We Come, 20 years old today. It's very much Johnny Marr's record - a deliberate attempt to escape the "jangling" indie band albatross round his pretty white neck. Tellingly, there are no guitars on the opener, A Rush And A Push. Elsewhere Johnny laid on synths and saxophones. Musically, it's their most brilliantly realised piece and expansive of work. It just flows.

[Read the whole article]

Listen to "I Won't Share You":

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Wiki]