Southpaw Grammar

Morrissey’s fifth album is a return to the bruising glam/rockabilly hybrid of <i>Your Arsenal</i>, with “The Boy Racer” and “Dagenham Dave” making howling drama out of probing, rowdy guitars and the tremulous sincerity of his voice. He does stretch further into darker themes, opening with the extended gothic horror of “The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils” (with a Shostakovich string sample), giving a former friend a sharp drubbing in “The Operation” and closing on an unsettling note, with the delicately scabrous “Southpaw”.