Morrissey
The Troxy
July 18

It’s a complimentary, perhaps even celestial, union between Morrissey and tonight’s venue, Stepney’s Troxy. If the venue’s status as an East End cultural icon was not enough to sate the singer’s East London fetish, there are a fair few other similarities that tonight’s pairing throws up.

Both represent two distinct musical and stylistic golden ages. The Troxy, with the art deco décor of its original 1930s heyday mostly intact, has played host to the likes of Vera Lynn and was used for a time as a training ground for opera singers. Morrissey meanwhile is a pop icon all in his own right, the gladioli waving indie pied piper of 80s outsider-heroes and rock revolutionaries The Smiths who, as a solo artist, continues to be one the most mordant and humorous lyricists in British music.

Both have also seen low points in their illustrious careers. Shady accusations of racism and some shoddy mid 90s work pointed towards Morrissey did him no favours, and the Troxy’s 15 years as a bingo hall aren’t steeped in glory.

But just as the Troxy has seen a phoenix-from-the-flames-like rebirth in its return to form as East London’s premier live music venue, so too has Morrissey garnered much critical acclaim for his latest solo effort, Years of Refusal.

After a montage of New York Dolls and Anthony Newly footage, Morrissey explodes onstage to a super-charged, rocked-up version of The Smiths classic This Charming Man. For all the naysayers who dismiss him as a misanthropic old kook it’s a euphoric opener, with the Troxy igniting with the energy of 25 years worth of indie-disco memories.

Irish Blood English Heart, with its squalling guitars, shakes the Troxy to its foundations (a reminder that the venue was once used as an air raid shelter) whilst Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself? from 1994‘s Vauxhall And I and a genuinely beautiful Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want both remind that Morrissey can be as touching as he can violent.

Even with Everyday is Like Sunday and There is a Light That Never Goes Out missing, it’s still a sterling set. Closing to a rapturously received First of the Gang to Die, Morrissey tears his shirt off, wipes down with it and throws it to the rabid crowd. Grown men wrestle for its tiniest shred, like a religious relic to be worshipped.

“Me? I do nothing,” a wryly modest Morrissey says. An electric set, a stage presence that verges on messianic: Morrissey, was it really nothing?