Lost Highway
2009
Years Of Refusal
About This Album
All the heavy lifting of his comeback finished, Morrissey settles into a robust middle age on Years of Refusal, an evocation of his thick Your Arsenal sound that doesn't feel like a conscious re-creation -- rather, this just is who Moz is, an old brawler who refuses to hang up his gloves or settle a grudge. The sound remains the same but the songs don't quite: although this is also produced by Jerry Finn, this isn't the deliberate revival of You Are the Quarry, all sharp edges and metallic sheen, the better to rope in the young emo kids who came of age after Maladjusted, nor is it the gentle prog pretensions of the Tony Visconti-produced Ringleader of the Tormentors. Years of Refusal is comfortable in its settled nature, in its roaring guitars and swaying melodies, sometimes ratcheting up the aggression -- especially so on the tight, compacted opener, "Something Is Squeezing My Skull" -- but often just riding along, assured in its might and wit, never feeling the need to change for change's sake. Such conservatism has long been part of Morrissey's makeup -- when everybody pined for a synthesized future in the Thatcher/Reagan years, he sought refuge in the past -- and now that he has people paying attention again, he's fine with not changing the sound and writing songs about his happy middle-aged miserablism, a miserablism that increasingly feels like a device to fuel Morrissey's satire.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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