Strangeways Here We Come

Gran último disco de estudio de los Smiths, quizas el mas rompedor y con alguno de sus mejores temas, lo cual es mucho decir. Bien prensado, buen sonido y por poner un pero, que cada vez sean menos los vinilos que tienen código de descarga digital, mientras que los precios siguen subiendo.

Uma das maiores bandas de todos os tempos com um disco impecável, numa prensagem 180g que deixou ele melhor ainda. Me recuso a escrever mais palavras, vou apenas sugerir: ouça LAST NIGHT I DREAMT SOMEBODY LOVED ME e tente não pensar em sua vida amorosa. Impossível. The Smiths é isso: ouvir as músicas e se transportar a um estado de contemplação, de admiração e respeito por essa banda maravilhosa.

Ecoutez, pfff c'est génial comme toute leur courte discographie d'ailleurs !

Ya estoy comprando poco a poco todos los discos de los Smiths, se escucha muy bien! y la edición de protector de disco trae las letras, pero no trae recubrimiento de plástico por aquello de la estática. Por el precio valió la pena. Buen disco!

"I'll see you somewhere. I'll see you sometime...darling" After thirty six minutes, it ends, fading out under ghostly harmonica, just as it had all faded in four years earlier on 'Hand in Glove'. Lyrically it’s great, with some eminently quotable lines - "If you think peace is a common goal, that goes to show how little you know" – but with much more waiting to be discovered over time. Read the second half as an extended love letter, a plea to a departing lover, and it becomes much more eloquent than the first or third albums – only 'Meat Is Murder' is more consistent. It isn’t necessary to see The Smiths as an impossible love story to make this work. We all know what happened next, so it’s tempting to assume there was at least some relation between Johnny Marr’s possible departure and the advances he managed against Morrissey’s nothing-modern, no-rock-affectations stance. The first song has no guitars at all, nailing the colours to the mast from the off. The end section in 'Death of a Disco Dancer' sounds suspiciously like jamming. There are two actual guitar solos, and the first of these, at the end of 'Stop Me If You Think You’re Heard This One Before' can be heard straining at the leash under the final vocal lines. Then there’s the long and atmospheric section at the start of 'Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me'. The synthesized Orchestrazia Ardwick has more to do here than had the Hated Salford Ensemble on 'The Queen is Dead': the boy Marr was getting away with murder! I know that according to those involved the sessions were good-humoured and the guitarist wasn’t threatening to walk out over every disagreement, but the distance covered between 'The Smiths' – even 'Meat Is Murder' – and the fourth album is staggering. 'The Queen Is Dead', I’d argue, was a transitional album, torn between the early jangles and the later symphonic sweep, with the Glam Smiths phase yet to come, and a couple of rock numbers adding some Meaty flesh to Side One. By 'Strangeways', the Glam Smiths period which roughly spans the singles from 'Panic' to 'I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish' was over. The final John Peel session had captured the band absolutely on fire, and for my money at the peak of their powers as a stripped-down unit, but now it was time to do some serious dressing up. Independent label owners, take note. If you don’t cater to the whims of your biggest artist, you’re going to lose them, which basically means you’re working for the majors, taking their risks for them. They all got it wrong in the end except Daniel Miller, who kept hold of Depeche Mode. Geoff Travis got it badly wrong, and so it was that fans of The Smiths knew before 'Strangeways' was recorded that whatever followed would come out on EMI. This took away some of the band’s indie integrity at a time when the word still meant independent. And then they went and split before the record was released. This usually destroys a record, however 'Strangeways' still made it to No.2 in the UK album chart. But I knew long-standing fans who didn’t even buy it, and once it became clear that it really was the end the music press needed to find someone else to write about. It’s that feeling of finality which coloured my early impressions of the album. "Oh. It’s over." And then it arrived, the last will and testament, with a near-impossible job to do: living up to a hugely acclaimed predecessor that still had a band to promote it. Would a farewell tour have made things any better? Probably not, and I’m pleased it didn’t happen. Certainly it took me a number of years – somewhere between five and ten – before 'Strangeways' came out of the cloud of the split, and the shadow of 'The Queen Is Dead', but it did so because I made the effort. My favourite band was gone forever, but like a mature and reflecting ex-lover I was determined to enjoy everything they had left behind. So I played 'Strangeways' whenever I wanted to hear them. At first, my take was everyone’s: Side One great, dips badly after the first song on Side Two. I grew to love 'Unhappy Birthday', which is a beautifully arranged stop/start creation, if easily ignored at first hearing. I still wonder about the lyric: is the narrator singing to himself, blaming himself for his own isolation? 'Death at One’s Elbow', which wears this album’s tutu, is slight, but it’s over quickly, lifts the mood to darkly comic, and it’s always great to hear Morrissey sing "It’s crap, I know." And then the child from those ugly new houses started to call to me. Because that had been me. Us. All of us. We had touched them at soundchecks and wanted them safe from the hands of their enemies, because somewhere back in 1983 they had reached out to us, from the radio, from the television, from the inky weekly pages, and showed us a Britain that we recognised all too clearly, but also a way of existing in it that did not require us to become or pretend to be dull, misogynistic louts. Please, never ever get back together. It was perfect, and you saved the best till last. "I won't share you with the drive and the dreams inside. This is my time."