I realize that at this point, I've probably lost everyone who I haven't already. I told you I was a Morrissey obsessive. If you don't believe me, check my entry for Southpaw Grammar!
Accepted history records Your Arsenal as the Big Comeback, but to hell with that. Great songs, Mick Ronson's production is nice and all, but it hangs together nowhere near as well as this live album taken from the tour, which has everything from said album on it minus one track. Not to mention some other fun things, but more about that later.
So that's why "The National Front Disco" has the man in pretty fine voice but the band in even better one, as it were, playing up a storm and eventually turning into this brief but worth it white-noise thrashout, and why "Glamorous Glue" finally turns into the nuclear strength brawler it was supposed to be, and why "London is dead! London is dead!" finally gets a resonance beyond your typical 'oh yeah, he would say that' reaction, and why "Certain People I Know" wears its T. Rex revamp well, and why "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" has a shimmering snarl of a guitar kicking it off and ends with portentous chords in the spotlight. Etc. -- the point is, Your Arsenal should have sounded this good, but didn't, so hurray for this.
But the larger point is that this is just a damn enjoyable live album, and I've listened to it more times than I can count by now. God knows whether it's simply the performances or the sequencing or the way His Mozness comes up with some good throwaway bits ("I -- still -- cannot -- speak -- French. I -- am -- very -- lazy."), but whatever it is, it works. Lesser solo tracks sound much better here -- I'm thinking of the way "November Spawned a Monster" floats then returns back to the song, audience helping the entire time, but also how "The Loop" becomes a nutty little romp.
And then there's "Jack the Ripper," on record a not-bad little B-side from late 1992. Live, it became an honest-to-god radio hit out here in southern California, even though this album wasn't released in the States at all. Why? Because the lyric is one of his best screwed-up-relationship-but-there's-hope-yet-little-charmer-just-maybe ones ever, and the line "Crash into my arms" just works for me, and the music is dramatic, big and perfect, dreamy and fierce, and when the one-note descending solos at the end kick in, the storm breaks, everything collapses, it's all one last kiss-off to the world. And it's great.
Neat version of "Suedehead" too, by the way. I guess it was a good lay.