Morrissey – ‘Viva Hate’
Just six months after The Smiths released their final album, Strangeways, Here We Come, lead singer Morrissey delivered his first solo project entitled Viva Hate – a fittingly titled LP, given the whirlwind demise of his band. The Smiths had, of course, called time on their playing career just months before Strangeways even made its way to the shelves of record shops worldwide.
Morrissey wanted to kick off his solo career in lightning fashion, and the biggest questions surrounding Viva Hate’s release were along the lines of what Morrissey’s songwriting would sound like without the excellent Johnny Marr by his side. Would Morrissey’s individual endeavours follow anything remotely like The Smiths? Can Morrissey even play an instrument?
That latter remains to be answered, as while Morrissey provided the lyrics and vocal takes for Viva Hate, all the music was composed by English producer Stephen Street, who had previously worked as an engineer on the first three Smiths albums before assuming a producer role on Strangeways. Morrissey and Street also employed Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly to help write the tunes, as well as several session musicians to actually lay it down. So, are we to judge Viva Hate on Morrissey’s lyrics alone? After all, the rest bears the Morrissey brand name, but it’s hard to imagine that he had much influence on Street’s compositional writing. Yet it is the musical energy of the record that largely propels it to a level of commendable position. The opening track ‘Alsatian Cousin’ takes the hard-hitting sound of Strangeways and gives Morrissey the opportunity to sing typically Moz refrains like, “Were you and he lovers? And if you were, then say you were?”
Ironically, it feels as though Morrissey departs from the ubiquitous “jingle-jangle” sound of The Smiths that Johnny Marr had orchestrated while the band were still together. Take, for instance, the sharp snare on the short second offering ‘Little Man, What Now?’ as its main draw. Morrissey was clearly more willing to experiment on Viva Hate now he no longer had the shackles of Marr to contend with. Still, there are moments which are undeniably Smiths-like, and ‘Bengali in Platforms’ carries the same sonic texture, particularly its guitar lines and chord progressions. Its theme is also prevalent, with the consideration of how a British Asian person might want to abandon their heritage in favour of Western culture in the 1980s. It might sound like The Smiths, but that only serves to show the singularity of Morrissey himself.
Thus, it is no surprise that the singer feels at home in his most dour moments. The album’s second single, ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’, is where Moz takes us on a trip through the wasteland-like seaside towns of Britain, so derelict that the only solution in his eyes is to drop a “nuclear bomb” and be done with them once and for all. As always, Morrissey is at his most creatively comfortable highlighting a British cultural issue and simultaneously taking the piss out of it.
Nevertheless, there is evidence that Morrissey wants to expand his horizons on Viva Hate; it is varied in its musical approach throughout. Evidence for this comes from the triumphant ‘Break Up The Family’. The track features excellent custom percussion and a bassline that just about borders on a David Bowie-esque funk. However, this same varied production drags the listener all over the place, and the track following ‘Break Up The Family’, ‘Treat Me Like a Human Being’, sounds starkly different in a jarring fashion. This atonal mix almost seems as though it was a demo recorded in The Smiths’ early days and reprised for the sake of bulk.
So perhaps Viva Hate serves as Morrissey finally being able to flex his creative muscles and explore the genres that he had wanted to venture into throughout his earlier career and finding his feet in doing so. After all, he had always been known to want to push his music in the direction of 1950s and ’60 pop but likely knew that he had to keep his fans from The Smiths onside in order to push his career ever forward.
Viva Hate features enough Smiths styled – and admittedly miserable – songs for those of us dourly inclined to stay interested and pick them out as new favourites while pushing a new pop-sensibility to the fore with songs like ‘I Don’t Mind If You Forget Me’. The record is certainly not a classic like The Queen Is Dead, but it is a safe and steady first step into the solo world.
