It would be nice to report that Morrissey's first album for seven years is the masterpiece he's been promising us in all his recent interviews. Unfortunately, as so often with the Mozzer, the music isn't quite strong enough to live up to the myth. True, this is the most focussed and purposeful set of songs he's written in a long time - and believe it or not, some even sound a bit like the Smiths. But there's too many hackneyed themes, forgettable tunes and uncharacteristically cliched lyrics here to make You Are The Quarry the masterpiece its creator so desperately wants it to be. When he lets his hair down, as on the breezy, poppy 'First of the Gang to Die' (surely a future single), you can see why Morrissey inspires such devotion in so many people. When he tries to show off how clever he is, however, it becomes painfully obvious why his career went off the rails in the first place. The cover shows him cradling a rifle - what a shame it turns out to be full of blanks.
