Curious beast, the live album. So often a joyless, thoughtless, contract obligating affair, on the odd occasion it can erupt into a riot of celebration, capturing the moment when a band or artist take flight – think Live & Dangerous, Set List and, yes, Quo Live!.
Curious beast, Morrissey.
Few others can have had cause to look back on last year with such a happy heart, 12 months that saw him revive a struggling solo career and re-emerge as a genuine star, something that would certainly be worth marking. Odd then that this is a slightly slip-shod effort.
There’s the title for a start and the insistence that this was recorded at one London date at the tail end of last year. It wasn’t, in fact stemming from five shows including Dublin. The ‘live’ atmosphere is equally ropey, with the sound of the crowd a distant hush and, Morrissey’s odd quip aside, no real feeling that this is a document of the man meeting his public.
The good news is that he is in spectacularly fine voice, far richer of tone than I ever remember him, and that he just happens to have one of the greatest back catalogues in British music from which to take 18 songs.
Those with only a passing knowledge may look blankly at some of the titles but the likes of ‘Redondo Beach’, ‘Let Me Kiss You’ and ‘Friday Mourning’ are all worthy of his more well known moments, a fair handful of which appear across the set and sound quite fabulous in this latest guise.
Tellingly, none sound quite as alive as the searing version of ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ that comes near the close, proof that he has at last managed to balance the past and the future.