Morrissey. A name that will make you scream with felicity or rage—it just goes to show the impact he has on popular culture. Who is he? A pastiche of Ronald Firbank? A wannabe Oscar Wilde? A Jean Genet wrestling with the mot juste? Nah, he isn’t a saint or a thief. Isn’t it fitting that Morrissey presciently summed it up himself in 1986’s “Bigmouth Strikes Again”? That is to say: Joan of Arc. Without a noble cause (who knows in his eyes), he has kept to this steadfast belief: Morrissey will never recant being himself.
Indubitably, Morrissey is a complex and divisive figure who is claimed by the right and vilified by the left. The fact that he elicits such strong reactions from people illustrates his undisputed cultural significance as a pop star. Yet a pop star is a cipher, an amorphous idea whose existence entirely depends on the Other (the audience). As the cultural critic Greil Marcus penned in his book Lipstick Traces (1989), pop is a “symbol factory”, or, you could say, a modern-day Plato’s Cave. To a certain extent, Morrissey is a mere shadow and presumably understands it as such: the pop realm warrants and often encourages the histrionics of the id.
A youthful Steven Morrissey was there for the punk explosion of the late 1970s, which adopted the ethos of Dadaism: provocation. Taking the lesson to heart, he has remained an inveterate contrarian. Yet there is an irony to Make-Up Is a Lie: it’s rather tame, which is both its strength and its weakness. For example, the middle section—”Zoom Zoom the Little Boy” and jazz-fusion “The Night Pop Dropped”—is insipid; it is so middle-of-the-road that he should receive a driving ban.
Morrissey is still subversive and damn-right offensive. There is “Notre-Dame”, a track about the Paris cathedral fire in 2019, which suggests that the official version given by the French government of how the fire began isn’t the case (in other words, most likely adopting a right-wing conspiracy theory). Also, as is his wont, Morrissey laments over his mistreatment by the media and the music industry. Yes, it’s an album not bereft of controversial material.
The first thing that you will notice about this record is how refreshingly modern it sounds, such as the opener “You’re Right, It’s Time”, which begins with a crunchy snare and a funky bassline, before an acoustic guitar abets Morrissey, who, not having sounded better in years, declares his putative cancellation: “I wanna speak up and to not be trapped by censorship.” Of course, Morrissey has not been cancelled (cue his talent for self-dramatization). Moreover, it is also a reflection on mortality, a motif of the record. “In search of wisdom so much wiser than my own,” he intones like a Kerouacian Dharma Bum.
Morrissey’s so-called allegiance to far-right Britain, as well as his previous asinine comments, have besmirched many reviews of Make-Up Is a Lie. In other words, those reviews have little to do with the merits of the album and are instead a projection of writers’ and publications’ political leanings, disguised as cultural criticism. However, this also works on the opposite end of the political spectrum, with the right claiming Morrissey as some savior of freedom of speech in the pop world.
What I want to know is: Is Make-Up Is a Lie worth a listen? Can Morrissey still pen a poetic lyric? Has he still got a sense of humor? What does he really think of Nigel Farage? In all seriousness, Make-Up Is a Lie is a very good album—perhaps his best since You Are the Quarry (2004). As established, the record deals with the theme of mortality, and, naturally, is also a reflection on youth, when Morrissey was gauche, sensitive, and misunderstood, when living meant dying, when working meant boredom, and when the only way to live was through heroes. Has anything changed? To this day, he holds his heroes dearly like lovers. However,, when your heroes are the Beats, James Dean, Pasolini, Cocteau (Morrissey has great taste), would you have the strength to let them go?
Paris is the setting for many of the songs: “Notre-Dame” to the infectious synth-laden tune “Make-Up Is a Lie”, which seems to be about the French actress and animal right activist Brigitte Bardot (this would explain the title of the song, which seems to allude to cosmetic animal testing), through to the spectral minor-key piano ballad “Boulevard”, the apogee of the album. The latter builds with a bowed bass, while Morrissey’s vocal melody carries the song, or the song carries him. Either way, it makes you fall in love with him all over again (damn his mellifluous chanson-esque croon).
Continuing with the theme of adolescence, there is an encomium to Lester Bangs, whom Morrissey, as a nerd in his youth, would read his record reviews of Roxy Music and New York Dolls, which explains the lackluster cover of the former’s “Amazona”, a performance in which the singer mumbles words to keep himself from falling asleep.
Sonically, Make-Up Is a Lie is adroitly produced by Joe Chiccarelli, with prominent acoustic guitar features evoking the Smiths, especially the album Meat Is Murder. In “Many Icebergs Ago”, Morrissey sings over an arpeggiated acoustic guitar, creating a drama that demonstrates he does not need much instrumentation, if any, to carry a song’s emotion, to carry it to its conclusive depth and beauty, depravity and brutality, to watch it sink only to rise, rise only to sink. Life is short is what the song is saying; believe it before it’s over.
There are references to pubs in the East End of London, such as Ten Bells, which is associated with Jack the Ripper’s victims: Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly. Also, Morrissey namechecks the rock duo Sparks and Rousseau, a French philosopher and writer (and a bloody good walker, cue Reveries of the Solitary Walker), who believed humans to be inherently good but corrupted by society (what are you hinting at, Morrissey?).
The inclusion of Alain Whyte, Morrissey’s songwriter between 1991 and 2007, makes a significant difference, particularly to the sweeping melodies, as heard in the last track, “The Monsters of Pig Alley”, which echoes Vauxhall and I. Lyrically, it is about a young musician who turns to suicide, after falling from fame, heard from the parents’ perspective. To end the nostalgic-gazing album with a track that is a musical throwback to his early 1990s work is a clever and effective move; undoubtedly, it is one of his best solo tracks to date.
Make-Up Is a Lie is a love letter to Paris: schmaltzy, befuddling, arresting, but, most of all, Morrissey. Potentially, the record could be the start of a late-career renaissance. Of course, we will have to see if that turns out to be true, or, in search of lost time, will Morrissey remain throwing his arms around Paris?