Video: Johnny Marr – “Spiral Cities”

Directed by Mat Bancroft and Johnny Marr. Single is out now on New Voodoo with new b-side “Spectral Eyes.”

Brian: I’m not the Messiah!

Arthur: I say you are, Lord, and I should know, I’ve followed a few!

Crowd: Hail, Messiah!

Brian: I’m not the Messiah! Will you please listen?! I’m not the Messiah, do you understand?! Honestly!

Woman: Only the true Messiah denies his divinity!

Brian: What?! Well, what sort of chance does that give me?! All right, I am the Messiah!

Crowd: He is! He is the Messiah!

Brian: Now, fuck off!

[Silence]

Arthur: How shall we fuck off, oh Lord?

Brian: Oh, just go away! Leave me alone!

–Monty Python’s The Life of Brian

That was basically Johnny Marr in the 80s. As one of the two leaders of a band so proudly anti-hero, it’s interesting (and even a bit fun) to see Marr step out, and into the role of front man in his solo years. Clearly healthy living does him well as he looks like he was frozen in time in 1996, and this song sounds like it was too. It’s a catchy little piece of Britpop with an appropriately vanity video to accompany it.

Jake has said that Johnny Marr needs a foil to really tap into his brilliance, and that’s probably true. So while you may not find anything revelatory in this new single, it is a nice little jam and maybe a slight reminder of a time before Brexit when England was proud, but not belligerent. Maybe Johnny Marr just needs a new messiah? Maybe we all do?

Johnny Marr: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Video: Johnny Marr – “Hi Hello”

From Call The Comet, due June 15 on New Voodoo.

How great do Johnny Marr’s guitars sound on this song? Got a bit of that “Money Changes Everything”/”Draize Train” vibe going on. The instrumental track would have fit nicely on a b-side in 1986.

Johnny Marr has always worked best when he’s writing with a foil, and unfortunately a lot of his solo material comes across as the kind of second rate British indie that would’ve been included on a cassette given away with Vox magazine in 1991 between Chapterhouse and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Sure, you’d put the song on a couple of mixtapes, but a few years later you wouldn’t even remember the name of the band.

Oh well. I’m glad he’s still around. And he’s probably going to live forever because he’s vegan and he runs. There’s plenty of time for him to join or start a new band with a good lyricist and singer.

Johnny Marr: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Video: Johnny Marr – “The Tracers”

From Call The Comet, due June 15 on New Voodoo.

We open with Marr and mates driving around what could be “the edge of the world” referenced in the opening lines of the song.

They’re driving a Corsair, a car built by Ford in the UK between 1963 and 1970 and marketed with a tagline that could have been a Smiths lyric, “I’ve got a V in my bonnet,” a reference to an optional V6 engine.

Where are they going? It doesn’t matter as long as you look good getting there.

But the references to overlapping times and places throughout the song and video are made more interesting with the musical choices. There’s a very Stones-y “Woo Woo” tag punctuating the lyrics and some new wavey noise. Underlying the whole song is a drum beat that could have been lifted straight from “Queen is Dead,” which I have to imagine is some sort of intentional call back to the band that made him famous. But what do I know?

Recorded at Manchester’s Crazy Face Studios, where it just so happens The Smiths also spent some time in the earliest days. Marr told Rolling Stone that he’d spend a lot of time wandering the old, empty building just getting lost in his own thoughts as the world outside was falling further into chaos with Brexit and a Trump election coming into full swing.

“It was a very unusual and creative environment,” he said. “I often lost track of the outside world. I’m glad that I’ve come out of it now, to be honest. It was quite taxing.”

Taxing, indeed. But by the looks of this video, Marr isn’t fully out of it yet…and neither are we.

Johnny Marr: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.