Morrissey’s Make Up Is a Lie is hard to love

I was very young, and it wasn’t something I’d done before or would do again. Incredibly, he sent a witty and charming reply. Perhaps that small act of kindness came from the same place as an archetypal Smiths lyric: “It’s so easy to hate, it takes guts to be gentle and kind.”

A lot of muddy water has passed under the bridge since then, and Make Up Is a Lie exists in a very different world.

Here, it takes mere seconds for opener “You’re Right, It’s Time” to rail against censorship. Morrissey’s voice still carries a rich, almost gothic authority, and the band provide a taut, powerful post-punk spine. Yet the familiar griping of a man complaining at being silenced while releasing a record on a major label, feels as off as it ever has.

The sleek, modern new-wave sound that surfaces intermittently suits him. Unlike some contemporaries, Morrissey is prepared to shake things up slightly. However, a worrying whiff of blandness hangs over the album, which feels like a vain attempt to court airplay. Instead, it sometimes sounds disappointingly lightweight.

Lyrically, we weave in and out of a familiar thicket of grievance and conspiracy. How you react to those thorns will likely determine your final view of Make Up Is a Lie.

“Notre Dame” pairs a twinkling electronic pulse with a lyric sunk by leaden conspiracy-theory gullibility, sending what could have been an earworm crashing to the ground. Incredibly, it had once been even more hysterical before being toned down. In truth, it should have been scrapped altogether.

A cover of Roxy Music’s “Amazona” is a welcome diversion, if only because the lyrical sabotage is briefly suspended. Morrissey does an excellent job; that voice has rarely sounded better, and the band tear into Bryan Ferry’s work with obvious relish. There’s a palpable sense of relief in not having to worry about what he might say next. The same applies to the musically understated and seemingly heartfelt tribute “Lester Bangs”. Elsewhere, closer “The Monsters of a Pig Alley” ruminates on fame via a pleasingly elegiac jangle.

These flashes of quality make the album all the more frustrating. If the lyrics came anywhere near his halcyon days, the shortcomings might matter less. The title track flirts with the spectre of misogyny but proves too vague and inconsequential to provoke much reaction. Worse is the animal-rights polemic “Zoom Zoom the Little Boy”, a painfully slight song undone by a ludicrous lyric and an ill-judged coda of animal noises courtesy of the man himself, although it faces stiff competition from the leaden “The Night Pop Dropped” and the ugly “Kerching, Kerching”.

Many will genuinely want to love this record, but Morrissey makes it remarkably hard. He even seems aware of this when he admits he is “in search of wisdom wiser than my own” and confesses, “I want to let somebody love me, if they can.” There may be glimmers of self-awareness within Make Up Is a Lie, just not enough to save it from itself.