Pitchfork

Things fans of Morrissey do unabashedly: wear Morrissey t-shirts to Morrissey's show, do their hair up in Morrissey-esque tufts, scream and shriek and squeal like it's the second coming when the man so much as exposes his belly button. These Moz-philes turned out en masse for their savior's lone U.S. appearance this season-- numbers enough to sell out Chicago's Aragon Ballroom, a cavernous space decked out like Atlantis with the heavens painted on the ceiling. In other words, an apt setting for our Pope of Mope and his starstruck congregation.

Opener and fellow Attack Records chum Kristeen Young made an awful lot of racket with just a cheap keyboard, some samples, and a drummer. Recalling Kate Bush at her most rambunctious (think, perhaps, "Sat in Your Lap"), Young's bombastic pop songs effectively filled the enormous space and overpowered the chatterboxes, even if they taxed after a while, sometimes becoming gratingly shrill or bulbous. Quite a shock to learn she's from St. Louis. And turns out she has a song called "Kill the Father"-- one wonders if it's a proactive response to Moz's "The Father Who Must Be Killed", from this year's Ringleader of the Tormentors. At least they're on the same page when it comes to both melodrama and patricide.

We were teased between sets by projected performance videos from pop idols of yore-- Elvis, Jacques Brel, Brigitte Bardot-- and prior to Young's set, the inexplicable blasting of Dvořák's famous cello concerto (perhaps playing off the concertmaster cover image from Tormentors?). So the room was pretty much saturated in drama and theatrics by the time Moz took the stage in a sharp crimson dress shirt to the tune of a thousand banshee wails.



Moz and his nondescript, uniformed five-man band wasted no time, tommy-gunning through Smiths favorite "Panic" and his own "First of the Gang to Die" and "The Youngest Was the Most Loved", setting a trend that would endure through the night: Smiths classic, couple newer songs, diva-like one-liner to audience. Moz began those quips by diva-fying Twain's exaggerated death reports line, and later invited a fan to help him rail on Americans for not being "sufficiently intelligent" enough to pay attention to him. Indeed, I chatted with a security guard prior to the show who'd never heard of this "Morrissey guy".

The band, meanwhile, were at their best when they slipped out of workman mode and breathed atmosphere behind the Moz man's wailings, using a room-rattling symphonic gong and bass drum to conjure up a thunderstorm during "Life Is a Pigsty", which cleared the way for that epochal whirlybird guitar that could only mean "How Soon Is Now" had arrived at last. The night's biggest travesties, however? No "Suedehead", and only a one-song encore (a good one though: "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want").



All said, Moz is an ace showman and it's not often you witness a man in his late forties, mane graying, tearing off his shirt, flinging it into the audience, and looking ridiculously sexy while doing so.

Hopefully Morrissey will grace these shores again next year, but until then, he and Young take on the UK and Europe throughout December, where, apparently, the people are sufficiently intelligent.

Far off places:

12-02 Glasgow, Scotland - SECC *
12-04 Newcastle, England - Metro Radio Arena *
12-05 Nottingham, England- Arena *
12-07 Birmingham, England - NIA *
12-08 London, England - Wembley Arena *
12-12 Frankfurt, Germany - Jahrhunderthalle
12-13 Munich, Germany - Zenith
12-15 Düsseldorf, Germany - Philipshalle
12-17 Berlin, Germany - Arena Treptow
12-18 Hamburg, Germany - Color Line Arena
12-22 Manchester, England - G-Mex *
12-23 Manchester, England - G-Mex *

* with Kristeen Young