Johnny Marr "The Messenger"

I was never a Smiths fan but it wasn't because of the guitar.  They always reminded me of R.E.M., which sold much, much better in southern middle Tennessee.  After moving to the tourist corridor of Orlando in April of 1989, we sold boatloads of Smiths CD's to the travelling Brits throughout the 90's, years after the band broke up.  I kept my opinions to myself and rang the sales. 

Going back to opening the very first Music 4 Less store more than 24 years ago, it was such a whirlwind of activity, constantly and quickly exceeding all expectations.  I worked every day for three months before finally scheduling myself an entire day off in late June.  I snatched up an unopened box of promos with plans for a belated "wake 'n' bake" birthday celebration (the store had its grand opening on the anniversary of my earthly debut).  Once establishing the proper mental environment the next morning, I popped open that box of freebies like the presents I never received (or would have had time for anyway), eagerly sifting through the titles in search of winners vs. re-gifts, and there it was...a pre-release copy of The The's "Mind Bomb."  The The, aka Matt Johnson, had released two of my favorite albums of the decade at the time, so into the player it went and the shift in musical style was immediate, perfect for my developing buzzon.  The accompanying release sheet detailed how the band was now really a band, and it included Johnny Marr on guitar and harmonica.  It wasn't a big deal to me at the time, but over the next few years, including the release of The The's "Dusk," I became a Johnny Marr fan.  Marr had also teamed up with Bernard Sumner of New Order to form Electronic (damn, I need to revisit some of their work), and they sporadically collaborated through the remainder of the century.  Marr did a lot of session work for the next few years, most notably with Pet Shop Boys, Talking Heads and Neil Finn's 7 Worlds Collide conglomerate.  I completely missed his band from ten years ago, The Healers, vaguely recall his involvement with Modest Mouse for a couple of years, and have no idea who The Cribs are/is/was/were.  When I heard he was issuing a bonafide solo project, I was intrigued since he's a collaborative soul and picked it up at first opportunity.



The title track has the The The (?!?!?!) sound to it I like.  Other bands this album reminds me of include The Verve, The Cure, Oasis, The Church and The Smiths with a happy vocalist.  Speaking of singing, Marr isn't great at it but effective, along the lines of an Ace Frehley or Marty Willson-Piper.  Since I've raised the Church reference again, here is my favorite song.  Man, I can hear Steve Kilbey singing it right now...

It's the middle third of this album that makes it a keeper.  After the decent opening track, the next three tunes are snoozers and the final third is 50/50, but it contains the next best song on the record...



Looks like Marr's domestic fans all bought this album the first week as it debuted on the Top 200 at #86 and completely disappeared the next.  His UK loyalists gave it a #10 debut and a couple more weeks of chart-worthy sales, but that was all, and I'll admit to mild surprise.  He's been hailed as one of Britain's greatest guitarists of the last 30 years and world famous music publishing/website NME calls him a "Godlike Genius," but they also called The Smiths one of the world's greatest bands (yeesh)...so one must take that with a few grains of salt. 

If you were ever a fan of any of the mentioned bands, you owe this a shot.