I love The Smiths. Strangely enough, I've never been so interested in Morrissey. Yeah, I know, that's kind of a blasphemy for a person who pretends to be a Smiths fan. The release of his compilation, Swords, gave me the chance to listen a few of his not so well known songs. I said "not so well", because Swords is a compilation made entirely of B-sides, but die-hard fans should know about them.
The collection features eighteen tracks that can be found on Morrissey's singles from his last three albums, You Are the Quarry, Ringleader of the Tormentors and Years of Refusal. As every compilation, it has some ups and downs (I guess it's inevitable, even if we talk about Morrissey). The good news is that there are more ups than downs. Even if you might feel the urge to push "next" when you hear Sweetie Pie (ok, it's slow, it's sad, we know you're broken, but sometimes too much "ahaaaa" can ruin a song), you cannot help but smile when you listen to Don't Make Fun of Daddy's Voice. "Don't make fun of Daddy's voice because he can't help it, when he was a teenage boy something got stuck in his throat" – now can anyone be more (auto)ironical than that?
At certain points, it is confirmed that sometimes B-sides can be at least as (or maybe even more) good than singles – Teenage Dad on His Estate and Children on Pieces are only two examples; let's not forget Friday Mourning which is a very powerful piece, lyrically as well as instrumentally. Speaking about instrumentals, my favourite from this point of view is My Life is a Succession of People Saying Goodbye, due to its piano line. Count in the cover made after David Bowie, and you'll came to the same conclusion I did: this compilation is a really nice one. Morrissey's music will probably never reach the brilliancy of The Smiths, but what the hell, if you don't like him, don't look at him!
*photo courtesy of Morrissey official MySpace
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