On April 13 the New York Post’s gossip page ran a story titled “Clash of the Britons.” What followed wasn’t a rundown of another sad scuffle amongst the royals, but rather a thumbnail summary of a bitter public feud between–ready for this?–Robert Smith and Morrissey.
The principals in this 20-year-old grudge have each released a new record in the past few months. Morrissey’s You Are the Quarry came out in May, The Cure at the end of June. At least among people who don’t consider both Smith and Morrissey woefully irrelevant, their history of petty sniping has raised the stakes for this particular pair of albums: Which one of these aging postpunk heroes can walk the walk today?
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Historically, the burden of proof has always been Smith’s. While the music press has often been willing to acknowledge that a Cure record is good, few if any of the band’s albums have been declared important. In NME’s December 2000 poll to name “The Most Influential Artist of All Time,” Morrissey’s old band the Smiths logged in at number 10 (of 20) and the Cure didn’t place at all. When that magazine ranked the 50 “Greatest Artists of All Time” two years later, the Smiths edged out the Beatles for the number one spot–and once again the Cure was entirely absent. (To give you an idea of what a drubbing this is, the Charlatans, the Manic Street Preachers, and Bez–the dancer from the Happy Mondays–all made it.)
But it’s been nearly 20 years since the Smiths broke up, and neither of those things has happened–in fact you could argue that the opposite has.
On You Are the Quarry he runs through a litany of offenses committed against him by the press (“You Know I Couldn’t Last”), pop culture (“The World Is Full of Crashing Bores”), and God Himself (“I Have Forgiven Jesus”). This martyr complex might seem funny or campy if Morrissey sprinkled his complaints with levity, but instead he relates them with a sobriety that makes Augustine’s Confessions read like the screenplay for Old School. “You must be wondering how the boy next door turned out,” he says at the beginning of “Bores.” Must we? Throughout these lazy performances, he comports himself like a man who believes he’s owed a living, and in the end the record amounts to little more than a stern lesson on how difficult it is to be Morrissey. Your job is to sit up straight and feel sorry for him.
But Smith creates something Morrissey never even tries to: the sense that he wants to impress us, that he needs us more than we need him. He brings sweat and conviction to The Cure, while Morrissey offers us only a bored sense of entitlement. I think he probably knows where he can shove that.
