Track Listing

1. Reel Around The Fountain
2. You've Got Everything Now
3. Miserable Lie
4. Pretty Girls Make Graves
5. Hand That Rocks The Cradle
6. This Charming Man
7. Still Ill
8. Hand In Glove
9. What Difference Does It Make
10. I Don't Owe You Anything
11. Suffer Little Children

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38743 in Music
• Released on: 1993-11-15
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Vastly Underrated - essential listening.
Even before `that moment', it is clear that from amongst the pomp and hedonism of the newly burgeoning new-romantic movement, something extraordinary had emerged; Mike Joyce's flat, monotonous drum beat sounding the birth of a pop phenomenon. The first few seconds of the tragically beautiful opener `Reel around the fountain' are both anti-climatic and tremendous in equal measure, until the voice. The voice! A wailing, exquisitely dreary lamentation of lost childhood. The anti-Le Bon.
Morrissey's first full length assault on the consciousness of British popular culture is quite simply breathtaking. Off set by the stunning virtuoso performance on guitars by co-songwriter Johnny Marr, and the consistently pounding bass lines of Andy Rourke, Morrissey's lyrical brilliance - telling tales of repressed homosexuality, feelings of worthlessness and infanticide (of all things) - is put to incredible effect. Whilst Spandau Ballet and such peers wallowed in self-indulgence, The Smiths' melancholic beauty serves as a testament to the difficulty of adolescence in the grey background of Northern England.
"Take me to the heaven of your bed / was something that you never said"
However, whilst The Smiths' notorious downbeat nature is evidenced consistently, equally obvious is Morrissey's fixation with classic British female pop icons (Sandie Shaw, Cilla Black), homosexual imagery, and the literature of Wilde. The sight of this whirling dervish of gladioli and quiffed hair appearing on Top of The Pops with the words "Marry Me" scandalously felt-tipped onto his bare, scrawny chest was surely something that Thatcherite Britain was utterly unprepared for.
Aside from the vivacious aesthetic, obscure cultural referencing and incisive social comment that is linked inextricably to The Smiths, their debut record itself is the perfect pop record. Aside from the now ubiquitous `This Charming Man', `Hand in glove' is downright ferocious. Featuring Marr simultaneously on guitar and harmonica at his most brilliant, Morrissey creates an anthem of lost love that, despite its subject matter, becomes astonishing pop music. `What difference does it make?', the LP's lead single, has been quite rightly instated as an indie disco certainty; its glammed-up Joy Division guitars and vocals surely breaking the resolve of even the most hardened cynic.
"A woman said / I know my son is dead...Oh Manchester / So much to answer for"
If one were (unfairly) forced to pin down the truly life changing moment of this incredible record, the album's heart-breaking climax `Suffer little children' is surely the most daring exercise in pop of all time. Cursing the terrible impact of the Moors Murders on his childhood, (he was the same age as Hindley and Brady's victims at the time of the tragedies just miles from his home), Morrissey creates an utterly unique pop song. Covering aspects of the murders from the terrible realisations of the young victim's parents to the devotion of the young Hindley to her sadistic partner, the song is quite simply like no other. Morrissey's vocal and lyrical performance beggar belief, lines such as "you may sleep / but you will never dream" set against the sounds of what may be a child - or more controversially a woman (Hindley) - laughing, are sung with such eloquent emotion that one wonders how he were ever able to deliver them without being overcome by their magnitude.
The Smiths of course went on to more slickly produced, but never artistically compromised, recordings. Rourke's heroin addiction and friction between the bands genii Morrissey and Marr led to self-destruction after just four short years. Their legacy however remains, in the opinion of many (myself quite obviously included) untouchable.

The Smiths at their most raw.
Upon first listen I dismissed The Smiths as a distinctly average album by their standards and in comparison to the heights of The Queen is Dead. However, this album above all others has been the biggest grower on me over the course of say a year, and songs that once seemed a little tuneless and overly meandering (Still Ill, Reel Around the Fountain) and hardly up to the pop catchiness of later albums are somehow now more powerful and beautiful than those songs I'd be singing along to as soon as I stuck The Queen is Dead on, or Strangeways Here We Come.

The Smiths is an album that takes a touch of perseverence - perhaps due in part to the legendary under-production, done on only £20,000 after a less than satisfactory effort by Troy Tate. As much as the production is murky and often leaden, it has a charm which lends itself to the sheer darkness and gravity of many of the songs' subjects and lyrics - Morrissey here is exploring child abuse (The Hand That Rocks The Cradle), serial child murder (Suffer Little Children), homosexuality (Hand in Glove) and raw sexuality in general (Reel Around the Fountain). And he handles them with the subtelty only a master poet, backed up by Marr's mesmerising guitarwork, could.

Highlights of the album include "Still Ill", a nostalgic look back at Morrissey's experiences growing up in Manchester, filled with disolution and that wonderful despairing lyric "Am I Still Ill" with the grave feeling of prelongued sickness a terrifying thought when used as an analogy of life. "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" is a mesmeric lullaby with a hideous implication of child abuse mixed with terrifying images of shadows looming eerily over a child's bed - the feeling amplified no end by Johnny Marr's subtle and hypnotic guitar hooks.

"This Charming Man" was not included on the original release of the album, and doesn't really fit in with the album as a whole especially in its placing and somewhat more sheeny production. It is, however, a fantastic song and represents a lovely copmbination of catchy guitar and simple yet effective Morrissey lyrics. Indeed, along with "Hand in Glove" (a better version appears on Hatful of Hollow but there isn't too big a difference) these two are really the only true "pop" songs on what is a very indie album.

Ultimately The Smiths represents a darker and rawer side of The Smiths that they never really returned to. Marr's guitarwork is murkier and subtler than on later albums and Morrissey never revisits lyrics as risky and grave as those on "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" or "Suffer Little Children" (a song about the Moors Murders which just about manages to pull off such a serious subject with enough subtelty and grace). It took a long time for the album to grow on me but I now rank it a very close second to The Queen is Dead among The Smith's albums.

Underrated album is one of their best.
Whilst seen as a major disappointment by some music critics, who slammed it's production as "leaden and uninspired", the album has an exciting, raw feel to it which the polished later albums lack. Certainly there are lesser songs present here, but the classics outweigh the fillers. The standouts? 'You've Got Everything Now' is an absolutely marvellous track and 'Reel Around The Fountain' justly classic, whilst 'Still Ill' is an absolute joy to behold- superb lyrics and an excellent vocal by Morrissey. So, ignore those blasted ignorant critics and purchase this record. You really won't regret it- and will be writing a similarly gushing review within days- guaranteed.