“I make this claim, now let me explain,” Morrissey sings after he first utters the title of “Jacky’s Only Happy When She’s Up on the Stage,” a standout track on his bizarre and ambitious new album Low in High School. Ironically, this is one of his recent statements that needs the least defending. Some zealous fans have suggested the song—which tells the story of a woman devoting herself to the theater after a bout of heartbreak—is an allegory for Britain leaving the E.U. (particularly after a live performance where he chanted “Brexit!” repeatedly at the end). But it plays more like a thinly veiled confession from Morrissey himself. “Jacky cracks when she isn’t on stage,” he admits in its final verse, as the audience flees the room.
Morrissey has courted controversy and dared his fans to abandon him throughout his entire career, but Low in High School marks his second consecutive release that feels regrettably tethered to his increasingly alienating public persona. 2014’s muddled, exhausting World Peace Is None of Your Business was a career-low that’s now nearly impossible to hear. Shortly after its release, the album was removed from record distributors and streaming services due to a clash with his label: a move that feels as bluntly symbolic as, well, the conceit of a Morrissey song. If later solo highlights like 2004’s You Are the Quarry felt like catching up with an old friend, Morrissey’s music is now more like scrolling through their Twitter feed and remembering why you stopped hanging out in the first place.
Since we first met him fronting the Smiths in the ’80s lamenting how pop music said nothing to him about his life, Morrissey has been adamant about imbuing his records with deeper political ambitions. But Low in High School returns him to his most utilitarian purpose: a spokesperson for youthful melancholy. This theme surfaces both in the album title and its cover art—Morrissey’s first in over two decades not to feature his own visage. The first single, “Spent the Day in Bed,” even plays like the 58-year-old’s spin on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a magical day spent shirking one’s obligations, delivered with a prescriptive, winking omniscience. “I’m not my type,” he sings in its funniest line, “But I love my bed.” Fortunately, that song, with its squelchy production and barely-there verses, feels like a pit-stop on the record more than a statement of purpose. For better or worse, Morrissey shows up to work.