The Messenger –
Johnny Marr
Just prior to the one-minute mark of Johnny Marr’s “first”
solo album “ever,” there erupts a bass-and-piano line which would need only a
few of Andy Roarke’s opioids to honorably function as the first new Smiths’
material since Strangeaways, Here We Come. It sounds like an undiscovered melody from Louder Than Bombs, actually. And it is a joy.
That bassline, however, is not the first shocking thing on The Messenger.
The leadoff surprise isn’t Marr’s voice—serviceable in a way
that recalls Bob Mould—or his lyrics (somewhat difficult to remember.) It is the grand sweeping shimmer of the first
notes of that first track, “The Right Thing Right.” This is no guitar-god feat of dexterity. Rather, it is the glistening fuselage of a
full-on band with a fully-realized sound, and if one were listening to it
without knowing the title of the artist or the name of the singer, one would
probably pin the source of origin in Sweden.
Not Manchester, or London, or Portland, where Marr spends much of his
time. But Sweden.
“The Right Thing Right” sounds like a single-of-the-month
from the Labrador label. It could have
sprung from the skull of Sambassadeur, or the Mary Onettes, or—on a sunny
day—the Radio Dept. And there are more
Labradoodles later on this album, and some of them rank among the best stuff
Marr has ever created—Smiths included.
‘Twas not always so.
Marr’s previous version of a solo-ish album (his name was front and
center ahead of The Healers, and he was credited for writing the vast majority
of the songs) Boomslang, included a
bunch of power chords and screaming guitar licks. Hell, the first song on the album, and the
best, had one of the top three or four guitar melodies of 2003. Unfortunately, it was titled “The Last Ride”
and was also the Last Bit of Awesome on the album.
A single rumpkickin’ guitar line does not a beloved album
make—and Marr exists in the permanent universe of the canonized/beloved. So 10 years after Boomslang, guards were
raised over the prospect of another exercise in solo-ism from a guy who failed
to rally the needed reinforcements the last time he tried this.
And so “The Right Thing Right” neatly reverses a one-album
trend of, among other things, ironic-to-poorly-conceived first track
titles. It is Right in all ways. Melodic.
Generously instrumented and layered.
Nicely—for Marr—sung. And oh
Lordy, that piano.
It gets better. The pseudo-Swedish
amazingness takes full flight on conveniently-titled third track “European Me,”
which surrenders the piano but substitutes a host of glorious chiming guitar
notes, a few orchestral touches, and gorgeous backing vocals compliments of
daughter Sonny Marr. The result—and here
a reviewer checks out the window for electrical storms—would rank among the
best four or five Smiths’ backing tracks, ever.
It is an immense song, and it manages to incorporate its multiple
flourishes into a whole that honors the best angels of Pop while skirting most
of its demons.
The demons. J. Marr
could not have emerged from the mists and released a careless pop album: the consequences would have been much more
severe for all of us (shattered hopes, dashed idols, the decline and fall of
Western Civilization) than the more likely scenario. The more likely scenario, based upon prior
evidence, was: he emerges from the mists
and releases a careless guitar rock album.
But No! Instead we
have a solid EP-plus of truly outstanding, wide-horizon, high-sound-wall indie
pop. On tracks 5 and 6, Marr’s voice latches
on to respective honeyed melodies, becoming one with the flowers and the air
(and, it seems, the fjords,) while the music plays out a scholarly collection
of the best elements of pop music from the last three decades. Again, some of these things—the
orchestral/synthy elements, the spacey guitar arpeggios—could have shown up on
some cocaine-fueled one-hit-wonder from 1986.
Or a Marr-inflected follow up to The The’s early 90s album Dusk.
Yet here, now, in 2013 those same elements sound timeless and completely
not stupid.
The Mary Onettes and Sambassadeur, among others on Labrador,
are current experts when it comes to tightrope-traversing the line between
embarrassed pop grimaces and blissed-out pop smiles. Both bands, each excellent, succeed across
said tightrope far more frequently than they fail, succeeding with heretofore
goofball elements including-but-not-limited-to: artificial drums, syrupy orchestral
movements, and subordinated guitar work.
At their best, the best songs of The
Messenger explore similar territory and succeed similarly.
Actually, what they become—like Dusk’s Marr’d track “Slow Emotion Replay,” and The Messenger’s track 11 “New Town Velocity“—is night-driving music
without peer. One hears not only the
engine and the wind rushing by, but also the stars overhead and the successive
flyover flashes of miles of highway lights.
When the best pop music succeeds, we hear images.
Perhaps this is the real post-Smiths Marr. Beyond the dance-y Electronic albums, beyond
The The and Boomslang and the latter-day
sessioneering with Modest Mouse and the Cribs:
Marr seems inclined to these comprehensive pop nightscapes. They
are equal parts instrument and studio, man and machine. “New Town Velocity,” like “Slow Emotion
Replay” from years ago, and like more than a couple of old Smiths’ masterpieces,
ends with us fading into the night sky as our cars speed on without us. When Marr sings to us about “mission
velocity,” and while another gorgeous round of female backing vocals provide
additional elevation, the notion becomes clear:
Marr’s mission, as it were, is
velocity. The escape velocity of
transcendent pop music.
Alas, it amounts to only an EP-plus because without a steady
band around Marr, barely more than a half-dozen of these tracks are wonderful. There are clunkers elsewhere during which the
melodies falter, the guitar jolts, and all of it leaves Marr’s voice to fend
for itself in the ruins. Most gallingly,
one of these clunkers is stuck onto the very end of the album after the euphoric
fade-out of “New Town Velocity.“ But this is of course the digital age, which
means those missteps need only be our problem once or twice.
There is a contact-us link in the middle of the Labrador label website which asks, "Are you playing in a pop band?” Would that it were so. For Johnny. For us.
(Disclaimer: Marr is
not signed to Labrador. Otherwise this
review would make no sense. The Messenger is out on Warner Bros.)
Keepers: 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11
March 2013
