Morrissey. Avatar of melancholic self-pity, sexual ambiguity, and intense misanthropy. Well, bollocks to that. Somewhere along the road to perdition he has experienced a Damascene conversion. Tonight he stalks the stage like a latter day Errol Flynn, and with his cabal of pink-shirted buccaneers beside him, parades his new, invigorated self.
It wasn’t always like this. On his last tour, Morrissey preferred to announce his return from a seven-year recording hiatus, by performing in front a gargantuan and gaudy display of his name in lights. It dwarfed him, but not his act. Now, with confidence sky-high from the unbridled critical acclaim his latest and most complete solo album, Ringleader Of The Tormentors, he has no need for any unnecessary ephemera.
The byzantine issue of his sexuality remains at large, but he deals with it in a more robust fashion these days. This is Mozzer as agent provocateur, happy to give the crowd all the sexual posturing and pouting they want and leaving them to make up their own minds. He blasts away any myths with the lyrical equivalent of a roundhouse kick to the chest; on ‘To Me You Are A Work Of Art’, he utters the typically Morrissey barb, “To see the word/It makes me puke” but quickly adds the qualifier, “But then I look at you”.
The confidence coursing through his veins is reflected in the smorgasbord of Smiths songs on offer tonight. On the eve of a day of abstinence, Morrissey indulged the crowd. Rousing versions of ‘Still Ill’ and ‘How Soon Is Now’ amongst others, mingled with newer material culled from his last two releases. He threw the gauntlet at himself, and his solo material stood up to the test. The Bedouin tinged battering ram ‘I Will See You In Far Off Places’, and its caustic America-baiting asides (“If your God bestows protection upon you/And the USA doesn’t bomb you”) deserves its rapturous reception. The anthemic ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ is carried off with particular aplomb, the neat display of Morrissey’s Irish heritage with the tricolour bass drum pleasing the more partisan elements in the crowd.
And the crowd is surprisingly hard to please. The usual swathe of acolytes hold court up the front, but, despite smatterings of quiff-coiffured diehards, it’s a pretty muted atmosphere. Perhaps the venue, which is basically a standard hotel function room on steroids, has something to do with it.
By the end, Morrissey is shorn of jacket, but still decorous in a bespoke black shirt. If flecks of grey are permeating his iconic ‘do, and his slight paunch more noticeable, he shows no signs of relenting with the showmanship. The parting glass is the Smith’s ‘Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me’, a paltry encore but sweetly received. The crowd dissipates, contemplating the impending sobriety of Good Friday. Morrissey’s resurrection is a hard act to follow.