Johnny MarrJohnny Marr could have retired his guitar after a five-year career, such is his legacy with The Smiths. Yet Marr continued to travel on varying slipstreams of rock, alternating between joining mainstays in their own right (The Pretenders, Bernard Sumner) and more recent indie wunderkinds (Modest Mouse, The Cribs). He's stood out front in the past with his Healers, but The Messenger marks his first solo outing – and it reaps mixed rewards.
Opening with The Right Thing Right, Marr is immediately on familiar ground, at least geographically. The thumping percussion and swirling backing vocals evoke the melodies of Doves, and feels like a refreshing homage to The Who. I Want The Heartbeat shadows Marr's more modern associations, especially his work with The Cribs, with his vocal delivery mirroring Kaiser Chiefs' Ricky Wilson. It's a good, meaty rock song – but wears thin on repeat listens. Marr's vocals aren't his selling point, but he's better when the tempo is restrained – European Me and Upstarts feel truer than the forced staccato of Generate! Generate! or Sun & Moon. The final two tracks are a perfect yin-and-yang – the warm and meandering New Town Velocity bleeds into Word Starts Attack, a Beatles-meets-Wire hybrid that is fun; worthy of further exploration.
Using so many reference points to gauge the success of an album is rife with issues; nevertheless there are too many “been there, done that” moments on The Messenger to be truly enamoured with it as a whole. This is the double-edged sword of being such an iconic musical ensemble figure – anything short of incendiary is deemed a failure. Whilst The Messenger never feels average, it doesn't rise far above the watermark either.
