This Year of Moz is off to a rough start. Between cancelling a few shows and a lead single which, the day after it released, has hardly been on rotation, it’s hard to see where The Smiths’ frontman will go next. Morrissey’s love letter to Notre-Dame, a simple enough structure for a song which seems to be part of a series in travelogue ramblings from the Suedehead hitmaker, is a mess. How could it not be? Make-up is a Lie at least had a catchiness to it which did fade, granted, but at least it was there. Morrissey is to be taken at face value. Dig any deeper, and you start catching some stray ideas and oddities which have been around for decades but are ignored by fans and listeners alike for ignorance is easier than suspending your morals just to listen to Meat is Murder. Notre-Dame is not worth the sacrifice of conscience.
At least there is a better instrumental insight on Notre-Dame. Apologetic Morrissey paying tribute to a building which nearly burnt down a few years back. Contemporary music is hard to make when frozen out by your record label, granted, but it may have been one for the backlog, rather than a lead single, given the changing times. Morrissey turns architectural conspirator on this track, an endeavour that feels as aimless as the eventually plodding and unconvincing electronic beeps which back him. Big mouth has struck again, putting his foot in it on a topic which won’t be of interest to anyone wanting more insights from Morrissey. But then that’s the point of engaging with his work in the first place, no? A Notre-Damning account of the fires from 2019 and it never feels all that sincere, instrumentally or lyrically. Morrissey remains in possession of a great voice, though hasn’t used it on material worth a listener’s time in quite a while.
Just a bit all over the place is the problem for Notre-Dame. It has some problems with its tone and style, the adaptation of those softer, electronica genre flourishes and this suggestion of knowing who tried to “kill” the famed cathedral. The weather is the culprit there, Moz, though he may have cracked through with the first-ever Notre-Dame-themed conspiracy theory track. Beats the ramblings of Van Morrison from the lockdown, at least. Fascinatingly poor is one way to look at this Morrissey latest. Just a real blowout of all the nonsense Morrissey has projected in public the last few years, but that his fans have swallowed as best they can. This is a turning point. Instrumentally fine if you’ve not heard this style before, and are fine with it being a watered-down, slowed version of what the likes of Baxter Dury have been doing for some time.
Lyrically is where the song falls apart. At least with Make-Up is a Lie there was a sense of aplomb in the face of what could be a tad controversial in the commentaries made on beauty standards. Not with Notre-Dame, though. Truly a fascinating experience to hear the equivalent of four minutes of White Noise. It’s not the rhetoric or Morrissey per se, though it’s his words and thoughts that make Notre-Dame such a dud. He used up all the goodwill in the world on Make-Up is a Lie, and it took him six years to stockpile that faith. But once that has been moved aside, a relatively low-quality song upon reflection with the excitement of his return buoying it, it’s hard to hear anything of real brilliance on the follow-up. Notre-Dame is an immediately tiring experience riffing on past glories and genre stylings, barrelling towards being out of fashion.
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