Low In High School: A Fashionably Late Review and Poll

“Do you ever say what you really feel?” Morrissey sings in All The Young People Must Fall In Love.

With 8 simple words, we are confronted with a question that isn’t exactly easy to face about ourselves, or others. The superficiality of human existence is nothing new, harkening back to stiff Victorian parlour room airs and beyond, but our 21st century world can also feel restrictive, with an urge to present an ideal life of perfect skin, relationships, and holidays via filtered Instagram photos and Fakebook updates. However, the filtered self can leave us feeling trapped and unfulfilled, and perhaps this is part of a larger, looming construct of control, where self-expression and unique thought are frowned upon. Self-censorship can overtake your life with such subtlety, you might not even realize it.

Low in High School poster at a London tube station

Morrissey’s 11^th solo studio album, Low In High School, pries open our eyes to face the situation in which humanity currently finds itself. The record is both timely and timeless, with lyrics addressing forces that relentlessly batter our spirits, minds, and even our bodies:

Police.

Politics.

The media.

Religion.

- just to name a few.

What do all of these entities have in common?

Desire to control.

On Low In High School, Morrissey has us investigating the question of freedom in its many facets: physical, intellectual, emotional. Yet, simultaneously, he is able to so beautifully weave threads of hope: love, creativity, freedom, through such heavy topics – reflecting our own delicate balancing acts between cynicism and an aching longing for more (which may be the one thing that keeps us going).

Morrissey and his band on the Low In High School Tour
in Dublin, 2018

As my horrid landlords are away, I’ve been enjoying a small, blissful jag of quiet around here, so decided I’d just scribble some thoughts down in a notebook about each song on the album. My goal is to avoid being too long winded (which is a habit of mine) and just extract a few little slices of thought and feeling that occur to me... so under 100 words* per song? Deal!

Let’s delve in:

My Love I’d Do Anything For You

Hard-hitting opening track with blazing brass. Puts the media’s propagantagonistic tactics to question as well as jabs directed at the typical yawn-inducing, formulaic life of employment – are we all slaves? Tightrope walk of cynicism about general world yet with hope (albeit dwindling) for romance – but with doubt such longing can be met. Some hope and some despair - how very Moz! Ultimately an empowering song with bold swaggering elephants, somehow... do you hear them too?

I Wish You Lonely

A throbbing bassline builds this song from the bottom up – smooth yet ruthless. The “tombs are full of fools” refrain hits powerfully – with lost causes we lustily throw our lives into in attempts to find purpose – monarchy, battle, the glue trap of romance-gone-wrong, and drugs – all opiates in a sense, to avoid thinking of, yet further hurling us into, the inevitable. Morrissey’s voice is fierce passion as he sings of the last tracked humpbacked whale: “never giving in, never giving in.” Pure goosebumps.

Photo via http://mentalfloss.com/

Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up On The Stage

Dark tones with a groovy feel – Jacky, our troubled artist, channels all the pains and losses of ‘real life’ into her art. “Free in the truth of make believe...” Do we create our own truths? The creative soul burns to escape. Reality comes crashing as the curtain drops and everyone rushes to the exit, leaving Jacky alone once more – instrumental and vocal chaos reflect this trauma.

Home Is A Question Mark

Mystical, beautiful... like silent woods at dawn, sleighbells create atmosphere, merging into echoing, mournful guitar phrases. “I hug the land, but nothing more...” A stray soul’s struggle to find home in whatever form - longing for a sense of belonging – and love - runs through Home’s heart-fueled lyrics. Morrissey’s voice glides smoothly up the high notes, and as strings crescendo, they fall back and we are left with the quiet heartbeat of the bass and...

“Home... is it just a word,

Or is it something you, carry within you?”

(Well, I wonder...)

And then, that last, beautiful climax... “If I ever get there, would you meet me?”

Spent The Day In Bed

Catchy upbeat keyboards and a luxurious endorsement for self-care. Also features some of the charming self-deprecating humour Moz is so brilliant at: “I’m not my type but I love my bed.” A fun song, but also with important messages – for your own sanity, avoid the news, which pummels us down into misery, and makes us feel helpless.

I Bury The Living

Another song wrapping us in atmosphere – crickets, the lone violin... then the attack – drums and guitars in a combat-booted gallop. A high-drama guitar driven masterpiece, Bury leads us into the psychological depths of warfare – a lure for the masses - “wretched outcast[s] with no point of view” to find identity in a ‘cause,’ misunderstood, and erupting with destruction. At times it’s hard to tell if the soldier is brainwashed, or enjoys killing: perhaps a little of both. The echoing, menacing “honour mad cannon fodder” chant climaxes in distorted rage. Toxic masculinity and futile violence persist, and soldiers become toe-tagged numbers... and the war goes on...

I Bury The Living live at Alexandra Palace

In Your Lap

A love song in the midst of uprisings, upheaval, and violence. Winding piano notes at times swell into thunderstorms. In Your Lap reflects a sense of longing while existing in a time that is disturbed, undone, and corrupted by power. I am curious about the little accents of sound throughout, whispers of crunchy chaos: are they references to the surrounding unrest, or ghosts of memories? The image of “dreaming of touching your arm,” a simple, beautiful, innocent gesture... so far removed from pepper-spraying officers and governments aiming to cause pain.

The Girl From Tel Aviv Who Wouldn’t Kneel

In a world where we are “put into our place” by those in power and by rigid traditional systems, the protagonist in this song bows down to no one. “Humble homes with mottos on the wall, symbols and signs in framed designs. Sure to keep the poor, poorer... in fear of a God who couldn’t save them after all”: religion also tethers people to controlled systems, keeping them from living the way they truly want to. Intricate piano and accordion notes give the track extra vibrancy.

All The Young People Must Fall In Love

Tambourines and a walking bass line lend a slight 70’s folky vibe. Nuclear war, corrupt presidents – all cause unspeakable damage – yet there’s also good in the world: love. Do those of us who are older lose sight of that? Many people are all words, but without meaning: “Do you ever say what you really feel?”

When You Open Your Legs

Exotic flair: chirping castanets, flamboyant trumpets, and Spanish guitars. Cheeky and rather naughty, this song induces wild blushing in those of us who are slightly shy, but it’s also a hip grinder. Flirty call and response conversation between instrumental and vocals seduce us... and “everything I know deserts me now...”: is sex the ultimate distraction? As an aside, I keep trying to picture Morrissey getting thrown out of a club at 4 a.m.

Morrissey singing When You Open Your Legs
in front of the Artist Colony backdrop

Who Will Protect Us From The Police?

Sirens. Distortion. Danger. “Say, Daddy, who will protect us?” The police claim to protect and to serve, but actions of corruption and brutality prove otherwise. Ganglord Pt. 2. “We must pay for what we believe.” Dark horns, chaotic chords. And no, don’t look to God to save you: "baby please run." Morrissey sings for crisis-ridden Venezuela at the end of the track.

Israel

Opening chord is a deep haunting, velvety rumble, falling way into delicate, sensuous piano phrases. Religion's life-crushing restrictions, a punishing God, and existential torment paint dark imagery in the song's verses: “we're all bones and flesh and shell.” There’s a significant line oft-ignored by critics: “I can’t answer, for what armies do... they are not you...” As Morrissey sings “Israel” his voice nimbly tilts across notes.

“Earth is just one big asylum

An explosive prison cell

See us squirm in our own damaged spell.”

Weeping violins intensify the pain and beauty of the song. Exquisite

I’m admittedly pretty late in reviewing Low In High School, as it’s been playing in my car for months... but a thoughtful listen has reaffirmed for me how cohesive this album truly is: it highlights our attempt to make sense of life while retaining a fragment of hope for more in the face of a damaging world bent on controlling us. Sometimes I think of Low in High School as a coming-of-age album, which fits quite neatly with the title (I could be miles off with this by the way, this is only my personal thinking) – as often during our teenage years (high school) we begin to question what we have been told by our parents, teachers, the media, and others. Many times throughout our lives we go through this same process of questioning, whether we are 16, 36, or 60; however, this is not an easy journey. In a sense, we are continually “coming of age”, in varying formations.

My favourite pieces of art (music, literature, theatre) leave me wondering whether they are cynical or optimistic, which means they have captured the essence of the very delicate, very human struggle of trying to make sense of the best and worst of life. For me, I think this album does exactly that.

Morrissey live at Royal Albert Hall 2018

And now, out of interest, I'll give you the very unscientific results of a little write-in Instagram poll I made the other week:

What’s Your Favourite Song From Low In High School?

Answers were all over the map - which is a testament to how strong an album it is. Final results were:

Tied with one vote each: Jackys Only Happy When She's Up On The Stage, In Your Lap, and All The Young People Must Fall in Love

Tied with two votes each: The Girl From Tel Aviv Who Wouldn't Kneel, My Love I'd Do Anything For You, Israel, and When You Open Your Legs

In 3rd place, with 4 votes: I Bury The Living

In 2nd place, with 6 votes: I Wish You Lonely

And in 1st place, with 11 votes: Home Is A Question Mark 


I'll leave you with a beautiful lost track posted by Sam earlier this week: Blue Dreamers Eyes:

* yes, I know I went a little over a couple times ;)

Could Life Ever Be Sane Again?

Europe sprawls a labyrinth of diverse cities and cultures, its map a puzzle of histories told and untold over centuries: inconceivable to mere human spans of time. As a North American, it’s awe-inspiring to see vaulted stone buildings erected over 1,000 years ago, so much finer than strips of box stores and strip malls and uncomplex apartment complexes abundant in my corner of the planet. It’s an okay place to be stuck in, even if you’re sad. I like distractions – and there is enough sensory distraction that, while walking down such overflowing streets, for some forgivable moments, you can even forget your own thoughts.

The magnificent old Europe: Prague

I understand why people want to conserve Europe and its cultures – even though I admittedly have a fairly non-existent sense of national identity; Canadians are really just polite people who play hockey and eat maple syrup, or so I hear. I also understand the desire, through immigration and other means, to help those who are in dire need and live in constant danger in their birth countries, and will risk their own breath, flesh, and bones, to escape. It’s also true that introducing different cultures allows us to experience a mosaic of cuisine, voices, art – and yet, no culture is perfect - and religions in particular may pose troubling, even dangerous complexities. Both an abundance of immigration and a lack of immigration have drawbacks – and this is too complex an issue to discuss here – and not the purpose of what I have to say.

Political conversations are scary. Religious conversations are scary too. People get very intense, very angry. They say these topics should always be avoided on first dates – or the divorce will likely occur before the first kiss. And yet - we are tethered to a backdrop of morals and systematic structures that are injected into unsuspecting us, from birth, so slowly it is difficult to step back and think critically about all we have been told. Absorb, absorb, absurd? Questioning these topics is productive, but uncomfortable.

A few weeks ago, it was 5 am and I was crying alone in a Manchester hotel room. I had been crying for a few hours, and the tears wouldn’t stop, which frightened me. Depressed me knows all about crying, it’s nothing new; however, sometimes a strange breed of tears occur, tears that just won’t physically stop, even when the mind and body are seemingly cried out, empty, exhausted, like the death rattle of a gas tank on a desert road trip. Sobbing, I guess would be a more specific verb to describe this, but that doesn’t quite capture it either.

For weeks I had been planning to go on the Morrissey tour, to 9 tour dates in 8 cities, in 5 countries. Train and airplane tickets would blaze me across varying countrysides and cities and languages in less than a month. Currencies and tickets in hand, I was finally going to visit continental Europe for longer than a mere 48 hours. However, as most Morrissey fans who follow him around the world would agree, sightseeing is a sweet side effect, and we are mainly here for the man who wrote the songs that saved our lives.

Morrissey singing during his successful UK tour in 2018

I touched down in Manchester after a not-so-bad flight, checked into my hotel, and was sitting in Arndale Centre finally eating some better-than-airplane food when the official announcement came.

Bad news hits in waves, the first wave comes as questions, confusion (no, it can’t be, or is not real), the next wave comes in numbness (shock and shaking hands), and the tidal wave of news eventually comes as a flow of tears. The waves crash onto the shore of your consciousness so fast your actual understanding of the situation sometimes cannot even yet grasp its reality (the worst I ever felt this was when I learned my 15 year old cat was dying: I just couldn’t make sense of it at first).

This time the bad news was cancellation of the entire Morrissey tour. My sadness wrapped around the fact I wouldn’t be seeing him, and an aching, plunging sense of missing him: for many of us, these concerts bring us pure joy – and a feeling of belonging, which we have trouble finding in everyday life. Then questions began their trek of my late-night consciousness: Is Morrissey okay? What would I do with myself alone overseas? Would I still be seeing my friends? Do I just fly back to the question mark of home? All of this upset and confusion of course stimulated more tears – but it’s the behaviour I witnessed on social media that nudged into the core of my pain – and now, on reflection, I think that’s what triggered their unstoppable flow.

It was nothing short of hypocritical, tasteless, witch-hunt level hatred.

Social media mushroomed into a hotbed of grotesque insults and twisting of words, bandwagon bullying, and hit-and-run nasty internet digs at already-hurting fans... And many people who professed to be so sensitive towards the suffering of other humans were in fact the most indulgent ringleaders of such behaviour. The schoolyard of internet anonymity was fully ablaze – and Morrissey was the target – simply for speaking his mind. Anyone who showed support was sure to be hit with the crossfire.

No wonder people are afraid to say what they think or feel.

I hurt for Morrissey and his bandmates, I hurt for my friends, and I hurt for the state of the world.

More beautiful old Europe: The Scott Monument

Our group is perhaps a microcosm for scary times... times where you must tacitly agree and say the ‘correct’ thing or face rapid-fire groupthink backlash. Intelligent debate dies and erupts into thoughtless name-calling. On Twitter, people who had never met me, never spoken with me, were calling me – and my very sweet friends - ‘racist’ because we love Moz – and continue to support him. This carried on for days, and one person I considered an acquaintance tore into me quite badly while I was trying to enjoy the Gothic magnificence of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh... Let me tell you, if you begin crying on those towering spires, you will, rightly so, attract some concerned looks. So, I turned notifications off on my phone and found sympathy from a gargoyle. Fascinatingly, or perhaps not – it was mostly white males who attacked me – and in the same sentence would throw in a sexist slur and inform me I am confused, privileged, and emotionally blinded with an invalid opinion. Sexists calling me racist for standing by my favourite artist – oh, my head.

My opinion is simply this – I do not have to precisely agree with someone’s politics to continue to care for them and admire them. I do not throw away my friends for disagreeing with their political opinions, so why would it be any different for the artist who has given me so much joy and inspiration? It just doesn’t make sense. You do not start a hate campaign against a family member because you disagree with their politics – if you have such a problem with a political party or viewpoint – would it not make far more sense to focus your energy towards the party itself? Morrissey has guided me through hard times, and helped me feel understood when I’ve felt lost -  how could I not love him? He has created timeless songs, tirelessly promoted animal welfare, and yes, he's saved human lives as well. The worst of the keyboard warriors, who in words claim to be so virtuous, let their actions speak otherwise: what have they done other than spread misery, anger, even slander?

This isn’t to say one must always agree – it is fine to disagree because that stimulates thoughtfulness and change. However, as I said earlier, intelligent debate appears to be sputtering and dying in its last breaths. There is nothing wrong with openly discussing varying opinions – but somehow along the line we have lost this ability. Name-calling, personal attacks, unjustly calling people ‘racist’ - do not promote discussion of complex issues – and the terrible, unfortunate truth is, it will hinder other people from speaking their minds

So, my sobs were intensified by what I saw as a vicious witch-hunt directed at someone I truly care for, and - even if I have never met him personally, I do love Morrissey. He interacts with kindness towards his fans and at heart I believe him to be a kind person with good intentions – but he is also a challenging person – a person who is not afraid to say things that some may find abrasive – things that confront our thoughts and beliefs – things that make us question the world around us. This is rare in popular singers, but it has been known to happen: other artists from John Lennon to Kanye West have also experienced reactionary response to their outspokenness.

The reaction to Morrissey, however, has been particularly virulent and bitter: which begs the question, why? Part of it is, undoubtedly, an increasing obsession with ‘political correctness’ - which verges on censorship. But another factor, I believe, boils down to relationships – and people understandably feel they have a very personal relationship with Morrissey, because he exposes so much of his soul in his art. I may be wrong in the following observation, but it seems that older fans especially, those who grew up with the Smiths, have been the most vocally antagonistic towards Moz. I personally cannot wrap my head around how these fans can, with brutal fickleness, throw away what has been such a big part of their life and development, but my hunch is that they built too much of their own reflection into Moz, thus ignoring that he is also human with a right to his own unique views. I have probably been guilty of this myself at times, and likely, most of us do this to the people who strike the strongest chords in our souls. Humans long to feel less alone, so we look to others to help explain the complications of being alive, of existence, to us. Beings who touch us so deeply are rare discoveries, and sometimes we spend our entire lives looking for them. Therefore, if we find an artist who can break down our barriers, we might expect something terribly unrealistic, which is, for them to become an object; in simple words, we want the artist (or friend, or lover – whoever it may be) to become an exact mirror to ourselves. This is an undeniably unfair position to put another human being into, and artists are human beings (not 40% paper mache!) So, the forlorn teen, who, in the 1980’s, lay on their bed looking up at Smiths posters - the teenager that still exists in many fans - seems unable to cope with their idol holding differing views to their own. At some point, the artist has been dehumanized, and is not permitted the right to his or her own opinions. As we all know, break ups can get very nasty.

No wonder most artists are afraid to express their own views.

But the things you once loved Morrissey for: his braveness and boldness - which he so humanly, so beautifully, so eloquently exposes simultaneously with his own vulnerability and fragility, are now the things you condemn him for.

So, while trying to make the best of my undoubtedly saddened time in Europe, these thoughts would drift in and out of my head as I walked down cobbly streets throbbing with July heat. Cemeteries filled with monuments to lives lived before ours, squares surrounding crumbling statues, and cathedrals stretching towards the sky with hope of a better beyond – all of these altered stones hold secrets of history’s faults and flaws and ravages. Do we learn from them? Or do we repeat ourselves in seemingly endless cycles of confusion?

Censorship and destruction of free speech cannot bring peace – one only needs to visit the Museum of Communism in Prague to see the devastation this can create for art and the questioning mind. It wasn’t so long ago that even fairly tales were dismantled and reconfigured. Our artists ought to be the ones who help us better understand ourselves and the world by challenging our views. By viciously attacking those we disagree with, rather than – simply disagreeing and trying to learn more – we will only promote monotony, stagnation, decay, and more hatred and division.

Has censorship helped us in the past?
Via the Museum of Communism, Prague

I admire Morrissey’s courage to speak his mind. In these times, this is an incredibly brave thing to do.

I will continue to support and love him: peer pressure cannot change my feelings and thoughts, and the beauty he has created will stand the test of time, of this I feel sure.