Morrissey - Ringleader Of The Tormentors

appears to be an album about Morrissey and his amazing testicles. It’s not that we’re saying it’s bollocks; it isn’t, it’s just pop’s premier depressed old man has decided to sing about his crown jewels.

No sniggering at the back, DIY isn’t in the habit of making this kind of thing up. Part way into ‘Dear God, Please Help Me’ (and lets face it, if you’re singing about them, you must need some) up they pop. Except Mozza doesn’t have your average manhood. Oh no, Manchester’s most downbeat export takes as much morbid delight as you may imagine from telling us about the ‘explosive kegs between my legs’. Blimey.

Yes, ‘Ringleader Of The Tormentors’ is Morrissey’s openly gay album. Or rather, the one where he stops dodging all the questions and decides to sing about openly getting jiggy with other men. Over the next few lines he finds a nice bloke, gets felt up a bit, then finds himself ‘parting your legs with mine in between’. We don’t think our mothers would approve.

It’s not a shock; it takes more than a bit of homoerotica to get a hot pink DIY feeling a bit uneasy, but this is Morrissey, a man who has spent the best part of three decades avoiding sexuality by claiming to have none. When the truth we all knew finally starts to come out, so to speak, it’s a bit like your parents giving you a talk about the birds and the bees. You’re well aware, quite comfortable with your knowledge of the facts on offer even, but by God, please stop talking about it!

Thankfully, Morrissey seems quite happy to get it off his chest, or as happy as he ever gets, at least. Suddenly there are string sections, thumping drums and off toddles our awkwardly suited friend. It’s almost quite sweet. Almost.

But it’s a Morrissey album, and the happiness can’t last. We’re already well aware that someone has knocked the old blighter off (‘You Have Killed Me’), though quite perplexingly he still walks around, somehow. ‘At Last I Am Born’ is as overblown as you might expect, demanding that historians really should note the time he took it up the wrong ‘un (we’re not even making this up - Ed), while ‘Life Is A Pigsty’ is a hallucinating number, a bit like waking up with your head stuck in a speaker, backed with weird sounds and a bit of white noise.

It’s not the content that really marks out Ringleader Of The Tormentors’, however. This time round Morrissey has taken his hand out of his pocket and paid for some decent production. Gone are the My First Casio Keyboard violins of ‘You Are The Quarry’, replaced with lush string sections scored by Ennio Morricone. The whole thing is held together by Tony Visconti, and he’s even got in a children’s choir for ‘The Youngest Was The Most Loved’. Morrissey and children, whatever next?

It’s not a Smiths album; there’s nothing that has the potential of ‘How Soon Is Now’ to make the haters begrudingly give faint praise. What ‘Ringleader Of The Tormentors’ is is a very good Morrissey album. About his testicles. We’re still giggling.