Make-Up Is A Lie arrives three years after its predecessor, Bonfire Of Teenagers, was meant to come out. That album has never appeared and perhaps never will: pulled by Capitol, who then sold the rights back to Morrissey, at which point Miley Cyrus demanded her vocals be removed from it, fearing association with the singer’s political views… frankly, no sane label would want to touch a record that dwells on the Manchester Arena bombings. The thing is, the title track aside, a lot of the other songs on that record – “I Am Veronica”, “Rebel Without Applause” – are among the best he’s done for some time. A superb show at the London Palladium in October 2022 backed this up.
Make-Up Is A Lie arrives three years after its predecessor, Bonfire Of Teenagers, was meant to come out. That album has never appeared and perhaps never will: pulled by Capitol, who then sold the rights back to Morrissey, at which point Miley Cyrus demanded her vocals be removed from it, fearing association with the singer’s political views… frankly, no sane label would want to touch a record that dwells on the Manchester Arena bombings. The thing is, the title track aside, a lot of the other songs on that record – “I Am Veronica”, “Rebel Without Applause” – are among the best he’s done for some time. A superb show at the London Palladium in October 2022 backed this up.
Yet Morrissey continues to operate in a constant kerfuffle, cancelling shows, swapping labels, playing the victim – all useful when there’s a new album to promote – and somehow glides through this chaos of his own making. Last week, at the end of a packed-out arena show at the O2, the 66-year-old bemoaned “the usual iron curtain blackout… could you imagine how big this would be if Morrissey’s music was allowed to be heard in Soviet England?” That’s fake news, of course: the show was reviewed across the board in the mainstream media and clips from it appeared on countless thousands of feeds.
You’ve probably also already heard this album’s rather elegant title track in which, holed up in a Parisian garret, Morrissey turns a mundane observation – make-up flatters and deceives – into something vaguely mysterious. Then, staying in Paris, comes “Notre-Dame”, a sleek, slightly menacing electropop number, written by longtime collaborator Alain Whyte, who shares most of the album’s songwriting with Moz’s regular guitarist Jesse Tobias. It’s an unusual style for St Steven, but one that suits the singer’s long purr. Just a shame it seems to be committed to the Islamophobic conspiracy theory of why the cathedral went up in flames: “Notre-Dame, we will not be silent,” he sings. “Before investigations, they said there’s nothing to see here.” Look out, Poirot, there’s a new sleuth in town.
Stylistically, Make-Up is all over the shop, but entertainingly so – there’s the hepcat shuffle of “The Night Pop Dropped”, the almost-“I Know It’s Over” lullabies “Headache” and “Boulevard”, a deliriously pointless romp through Roxy Music’s “Amazona” – and it all just about hangs together, Joe Chiccarelli’s clean production giving the songs room to breathe. On “Zoom Zoom The Little Boy”, a kind of psych-pop nursery rhyme, he recounts a childhood dedicated to saving “the cats and the dogs and the bats and the frogs and the badgers and the hedgehogs”. It’s Mr Tumble does “Meat Is Murder” – get the fans while they’re young.
For “Many Icebergs Ago” he embarks on a haunted pub crawl, reminiscing as he slips between old East End boozers while the music churns below, building to a swirling crescendo. “In the Dundee Arms, I said, ‘My wood withers on a stern.’ You said, ‘Yes, we know’,” he tuts in this sozzled shanty, a Kray on each arm.
“Lester Bangs” is a eulogistic plod through a teenage Morrissey’s obsession with the gonzo rock critic – “three thousand miles away this nerd hangs on your word” – and there’s more familiar autofiction in “Kerching Kerching” and “The Monsters Of Pig Alley”, two stirring songs dealing with the Faustian price of fame – be careful what you wish for – as an embattled star contends with avarice (“the lover you can never leave”), reality (“you need a good straight smack in the head”) and delusions of grandeur (“the higher you climb, the less you find”). We’ve heard all this before, but when Morrissey sings it – and he’s in fine voice throughout – there’s always a poignancy that seems to resonate. Make-Up Is A Lie may not be his best album, but there are worse ways to spend an hour.
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