There’s a prevailing stupidity among some mainstream music critics that a new album by a previously respectable artist can be considered a ‘comeback’ or a ‘masterpiece,’ when in reality it’s only their first album in a long time that didn’t simply suck. See: Bob Dylan’s last two, Neil Young’s latest, Springsteen’s last two, the new Buzzcocks, Radiohead’s last one, etc etc. Now we can add Morrissey’s new Ringleader of the Tormentors to the list, since Bitchfork sees misguidedly fit to drool all over it like a bloodhound in the ER.

Like many an icon, Morrissey allows his own hype to convince him that his own shit doesn’t smell, therefore preventing him from self-editing enough to see that half of the songs on last year’s You Are the Quarry should have been half of the songs on Ringleader of the Tormentors, and vice versa, and the rest tossed into a flaming oil drum along with albums by Phranc, Suede, and Gomez.

The new album does have two nice moments: one, Morrissey offers a near closet-come-out in the first line of “You Have Killed Me,” which states “Pasolini / is me,” a reference to the Italian director/poet much maligned for his open homosexuality (among other things) in the late sixties. And then he was possibly murdered by a young male hustler.

Two:
Morrissey – The Youngest Was the Most Loved

It has everything you want in a Mozzer tune: spite, kids, and pained falsetto.

And that’s really all Ringleader of the Tormentors is worth, unless you’re tired of Smiths’ records and maybe Bona Drag or Your Aresenal, which you’re not.