The Smiths

Few debuts can inspire legions of wayward teens to ingest copious amounts of Oscar Wilde and self-pity, but that's what this LP did. Better-known songs would come from the Smiths, but the mix of ringing guitars and lyrical aptitude in tracks like "Reel Around The Fountain" and "This Charming Man" is most definitely pop genius.

When Tom Robinson sang "Glad to Be Gay" back in 1978, he did it as a dirge - the irony,
while bracing, was entirely obvious. Six years later, the singer and lyricist of the Smiths - a
man called Morrissey - has little use for the ironic mode: His memories of heterosexual
rejection and homosexual isolation seem too persistently painful to be dealt with obliquely.
Morrissey's songs probe the daily ache of life in a gay-baiting world, but the bitte... More >

Morrissey's slightly skewed relationship to time and pitch codes his faint melodies at least as much as Johnny Marr's much-heralded real guitar. What's turned him into an instant cult hero, though, is his slightly unskewed relationship to transitory sex--the boy really seems to take it hard. If you'll pardon my long memory, it's the James Taylor effect all over again--hypersensitivity seen as a spiritual achievement rather than an affliction by young would-be idealists who have had it to here with the cold cruel world. (Grade - B-)