The Smiths - Meat Is Murder (1985)When acquired: late December, 2012
There were a great many bands that I became acquainted with through regular patronage of the Cavern Club in Exeter when I was at uni. Saturday nights at the Cavern were a regular fixture in the social calendar due to the wonderful Indie Disco and Atomic Pop nights that were on most weeks. The Cavern offered an opportunity for me to become acquainted with a great many bands whom I should have already been familiar with, but for whatever reason had missed.
The Smiths were the best of these groups, and I was hooked after the first times of hearing ‘This Charming Man’ and ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again.' Before uni, most of my musical discoveries were made through music television: MTV2, Q, Kerrang et al. The only Smiths song that regularly popped up on these was ‘How Soon Is Now?’ Although this is a classic, it is by no means my favourite and it has taken me a long time to truly value it for what it is.
I fell out of favor with Best Of… albums at some point, and made a conscious decision to look into bands’ discographies fully. With The Smiths I first went for The Queen Is Dead, due to its renown and it containing some of my favourite Smiths tracks. Then, a year or two later, when perusing HMV for last-minute Xmas presents, I stumbled into one of their classic 5 for £20 deals. I was feeling very frivolous that day and made an investment, despite it being very close to Xmas indeed.
Meat Is Murder was the safest of the options that I went for but probably the one I played the least. On the first couple of listens it just didn’t have the immediacy of The Queen Is Dead, and it felt as though it was lacking one of The Smiths’ incisive and direct poppy rushes. The lead single taken from this record, ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore,’ was one of my least favourite tracks on the Best of… I had acquired many years ago.
The only song that grabbed me at the time was the title track, so hauntingly different from the rest of the songs on there. But, positioned at the end of the album, it was so far away from the beginning of the listening experience that I quickly grew tired of the album until revisiting it now, inadvertently marking the 30th anniversary of the band’s only number 1 record in the UK.
This has been the first time I’ve really sat down and gotten to grips with the album and it has definitely rewarded my perseverance. Meat Is Murder needs to be mulled over and pondered to be fully appreciated, being a much more engrossing and cohesive work than any of their other albums I’ve listened to.
The title and cover art should have served as a clue or warning of this cohesiveness, of how strong themes of violence and weakness run throughout. Even when the subject matter for the songs changes, these tropes continue on, grounding the album and giving it a tremendous focus.
Stylistically, this album sees The Smiths growing in confidence from the self-titled debut released the previous year. At this point they have expanded their sound by degrees, mixing up tempos and adding elements of rockabilly, skiffle, disco funk to the jangling poppy post-punk that dominated their first album.
While ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ would not have been out of place on The Smiths, the penultimate song, ‘Barbarism Begins At Home,’ exemplifies this new found confidence; a hefty slab of new wave disco funk that would fit comfortably on a Talking Heads record. The extended outro breakdown allows Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce to have a joyous time, a world away from the barbarism described in the lyrics.
Morrissey too is notably more comfortable with his voice, and as such his vocal delivery is on point throughout. Lyrically, for most of the album he finds himself siding with the innocent, weak and downtrodden, while railing against their vulgar oppressors.
At times it feels as though he is painting himself as Gulliver, returned home from his travels. Finding himself disgusted with his contemporaries, he longs to live with the wise horse-people, the houyhnhnms. In ‘Barbarism…’ the paradox that “a crack on the head is what you get for not asking, and a crack on the head is what you get for asking” is reminiscent of the satire that runs throughout Swift’s work.
Both the young and the animal are exalted throughout the album, possessors of a vitality, knowledge and understanding that is lacking amongst adult society. In ‘Nowhere Fast’, when Morrissey proclaims that “I’d like to drop my trousers to the Queen, every sensible child will know what this means,” he is suggesting not only that the Establishment should be the targets of our vitriol but that the kids know something about it that the adults don’t.
Adults and the Establishment are portrayed as the vulgar militaristic aggressors throughout, beginning with album opener ‘The Headmaster Ritual’, a tale of oppressive school master that grabs, devours, kicks our protagonist in the showers and “does the military two-step down the back of my neck.” At once, the album begins with urgent arpeggios, a wild contrast from the previous album opener, ‘Reel Around The Fountain,’ which plodded along nicely but did not opt to draw battle lines musically in the same way as ‘The Headmaster Ritual’ does.
Songs such as ‘Well I Wonder’ and ‘That Joke…’ exhibit some of the pondering introspection that are rife throughout The Smiths’ catalogue, but on this album they are balanced with fast-paced numbers such as ‘What She Said’ - a wild rocket that does not let up - or complete changes in direction such as the closing title track.
After really engaging with the album, I've found that ‘Meat Is Murder’ could only work as the final track. It is a complete sea-change for the band, and musically they deliver a real sense of gravity which was lacking from their earlier ballad to the Moors murders victims, ‘Suffer Little Children.’ The song is heralded by the mournful lowing of cattle and an electric buzzing that suggests what is to come, both for the listener and the unfortunate cows. Lyrically, the song swings from hard-hitting and visceral ("it's sizzling blood and the unholy stench of murder") to the ridiculous ("kitchen aromas aren't very homely"), but the relentless and ominous marching of the backing prevents this from becoming ludicrous.
Meat Is Murder certainly marks a step up from the band's debut, and although it does not hit the heights that subsequent show-stealer The Queen Is Dead does, it is a wonderfully cohesive yet varied album that warrants and rewards careful listening. Even if you don't normally hear when animals cry, it is worth having a listen here.
Check out: 'Barbarism Begins At Home,' 'What She Said,' 'Meat Is Murder'
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