Product Description

No Description Available.
Genre: Popular Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 20-JAN-1989

Track Listing

1. Reel Around the Fountain
2. You've Got Everything Now
3. Miserable Lie
4. Pretty Girls Make Graves
5. Hand That Rocks the Cradle
6. This Charming Man
7. Still Ill
8. Hand in Glove
9. What Difference Does It Make?
10. I Don't Owe You Anything
11. Suffer Little Children

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9029 in Music
• Brand: Smiths
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Amazon.com essential recording
With their debut album, the Smiths launched an all-too-brief, but profound career that, largely owing to their outspoken lead singer, would be enshrouded in controversy and cultlike devotion. Lyrically, Steven Patrick Morrissey waxed haute poetic about homosexuality ("Hand in Glove") and child murders ("Suffer Little Children"). Musically, this album kicked a hole through the lip-glossed synth-pop that dominated the early-'80s music scene. Still cloaked in the lingering influences of New Romantic new wave and Clash-like punk, this album, like most great rock debuts, represents the group at its most raw and stark. But the core elements of the Smiths' sound, rooted in Morrissey's subtly off-key, morose crooning and nearly freeform lyrical arrangements floating over guitarist Johnny Marr's plucky, concise guitar riffs, are well-established here. The rhythm section displayed a similar relationship: Andy Rourke's mobile bass lines seemed almost to disregard any supportive undertones they could have lent to Mike Joyce's straight-ahead, no nonsense drum patterns. All the tugging and pulling worked brilliantly, cementing the sound that made the Smiths a landmark band of the 1980s. --Beth Bessmer

Customer Reviews

Manchester, so much to answer for ....
The Smiths were the best musical moment of the 1980s -- I know, I lived through them. This album is probably my favourite, and must be in the canon of amazing debuts: nothing like it before, and nothing since. For one thing, there was the cover art. At at time when most bands favoured monochromatic "new wave" dots and blobs, the covers were sober, nostalgic, personal and iconic. Crushingly vivid colours and their signature style made it exciting just to *see* their albums. In this case, the murky photo of Joe Dellesandro gives a hint of the Morrissey world view and aestheticism, but it's ambiguous and out of context, meaning that the Smiths became very hard to "brand."

But of course the appeal of this record came from its musical beauty. Morrissey's plangent, steady voice was astonishing, but moreso were his lyrics. "I dreamt about you last night, and I fell out of bed twice/ you can pin and mount me, like a butterfly." Reel Around the Fountain still gives me goosebumps -- it's an anthem which evokes not just the usual teen angst, but what is unusual, and sad, and real about it as well.

I love every track, but most of all its wonderful beginning, the glorious insouciance of "Hand In Glove," and the mordant "Suffer Little Children" which evokes the grisly Moors Murders as a foundation myth for Mancusian angst, but also for all of us who were trying to sort out the sixties of our childhoods in the early eighties. Morrissey & Marr, along with Squeeze, were the poets of the eighties, and this cd will give you a rich sense of its virtues, rather than the gelled and synthesised excess most people know.

A Fine Debut
The Smiths have (and have had for as long as I can remember) such a bizarre following. I admit, I was once one of them, the followers. I, like them, had all the albums and singles on vinyl, and I memorized all the lyrics, I had an all too big poster of Morrissey on my wall, too big for a straight guy like me, etc. etc.

I still like this album, though I never upgraded to CD as I have with the obvious ones (The Queen Is Dead, Meat Is Murder, Strangeways Here We Come). But what I like so much about this album is the rawness. Especially on Miserable Lie. Miserable Lie is more seething and demanding than possibly anything they have ever done since as a band. In Miserable Lie (and Still Ill), one can hear the heavier influences that Morrissey and Marr were always so vocal about; New York Dolls, Warsaw (later, Joy Division), and Sparks.

A year later, The Smiths released a 45rpm with Sandie Shaw in Morrissey's place and The Smiths behind her, Hand In Glove b/w I Don't Owe You Anything. A fantastic rarity. But, here is where it all started. And, so should you if you don't quite know the Smiths yet.

a tentative first step
Having heard first the best of/singles compilations, The Queen is Dead, Strangeways Here We Come and a number of Morrissey's solo albums, and having read of Morrissey's extravagant boasts prior to the release of this record, The Smiths was a surprise.
It's so quiet, so introspective, so humble almost.
It crept into my heart slowly, after repeated listens.
The structure of the songs is very simple. Their strength lies primarily in Morrissey's beautiful voice and lyrics. Overall, the latter seem more personal here than on any other Smiths/Morrissey album.
The Smiths is also the most haunting album, made so particularly by Suffer Little Children and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, two beautiful but almost unbearably disturbing songs.
The 11 songs on The Smiths, with the exception of the last, explore dark, sometimes unsettling aspects of love and relationships.
I'm still learning and I won't call myself an expert by any means, but I can name no one who tackles personal dysfunction - desperation, insecurity, delusion, dependency - with as much honesty and with as sharp a ring of truth as does Morrissey.
Other bands use garish make-up, distorted guitars and vocals and other gimmicks to shock or disturb.
But The Smiths deliver a bigger emotional jolt using impeccable melody and a warm voice singing lyrics like these:
"... a child cries: 'find me, find me, nothing more/We're on a sullen misty moor/We may dead and we may be gone/But we will be right by your side/Until the day you die/This is no easy ride/We will haunt you when you laugh/Yes, you could say we're a team/You might sleep/But you will never dream'" (Suffer Little Children) and
"There'll be blood on the cleaver tonight/When darkness lifts and the room is bright/I'll still be by your side/For you are all that matters/And I'll love you till the day I die/There never need be longing in your eyes/As long as the hand that rock the cradle is mine."
Listen and squirm.