Strangeways, Here We Come
Preface
a pretty short sweet album. not too fancy but humble and honest. sounds good, sounds a lot like The Smiths but still “new” to not be fully predictable. A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours and Last Night I Dreamt are perfect tracks.
It’s not too consistent for an album. they’re mostly love songs but also include hints about political and personal issues. I didn’t particularly dislike it but I was expecting more, hopefully, my next Smiths album listen (The Queen Is Dead) will be my favorite.
Review
My first Smiths album! starts with A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours, a very sweet love song. typical: romantic, romantic, and honestly a bit whiny. the keyboards sound like guitars. The song titles are too long. I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish is very harsh. a sudden ending, relative to the previous track. Morrissey sings weirdly at some points.
Typical me, I started Something
And now, I’m not too sure
I don’t quite understand Death of a Disco Dancer in the context of the album, the text is also a bit too repetitive: “oh, very nice, very nice, very nice”, “in the next world, in the next world”. I like his voice though, easily recognizable and pretty melancholic. it’s about a bombing in London: the INLA bombing of the Dropping Well disco in December 1982. the disco was visited by British Army soldiers from the nearby Barracks.
Girlfriend In A Coma is very upbeat! I knew they have this “happy music, sad lyrics” but one’s literally a dance song. Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before starts making the album sound boring, I know exactly what’s coming on next. ah, Last Night I Dreamt… I had heard this song before many times, it’s a favorite, a unique, pretty long intro. I love the crowd noises, it’s very alienating. everyone living and screaming and fighting and here’s a dude playing sad piano revisiting his dream.
Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me…
Last night I felt real arms around me
No hope, no harm, just another false alarm
The text is brilliant, the percussion reverb, everything fits really nicely together. masterpiece. I hate that it ended.
The story is old, I know
But it goes on, and on
Unhappy Birthday sounds funny. I like the rhythm, very proto-punk but I’m here for the sad songs and this one isn’t particularly one of them. Paint A Vulgar Image is about the music industry. very straightforward. he was a fan and now he’s a star and one day he will be a dead star, he’s all the characters. ironic how they also have many compilations and reissues.
Death At One’s Elbow is very American and bluesy. features harmonica and the guitars also make him sound like Elvis. I Won’t Share You is sweet and cute, it sounds honest and naked. the album ends with the same echo effect it started with.