Johnny Marr - Call the Comet

The Guardian 80

(New Voodoo)

There’s always an elephant in the room with Johnny Marr, a lumbering old elephant Marr last worked with 31 years ago. Ahead of the release of Marr’s third solo album, said elephant had been trumpeting on about Anne Marie Waters and Tommy Robinson, but this may, oddly, be to Marr’s benefit. The dismay Morrissey has caused appears to have led some people to take the view of Marr – whose every public utterance displays a man of empathy and grace – as “the good one” in the Smiths, and concentrated attention on his music in its own right, music that is now substantially more interesting than Morrissey’s. Call the Comet is an album to take advantage of that goodwill. It’s the best of Marr’s solo albums, and while he may not have the lyrical dexterity or vocal charisma of some of his former collaborators, age shows no sign of withering his facility with melody, or that gorgeous, liquid guitar playing. Call the Comet ends with a song that embodies both Marr’s humaneness and his musicality: A Different Gun was written about the Nice attack of 2016 and was being recorded the night of the Manchester Arena bombing last year. But it’s not angry; it does not seethe or condemn.

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The Guardian 80

(New Voodoo/Warner)

Johnny Marr’s voice, then. Not great at conveying specific emotions. And his lyrics, however heartfelt, can’t pick up that slack. And there’s the fleeting feeling – you’ll recognise it from any Noel Gallagher album – that these songs might be better with a stronger singer. It rarely matters here, though. Call the Comet is a resounding success, the first of Marr’s three solo albums to feel properly crafted. The loose thread it follows is that, in turbulent times, even the simple act of picking up a guitar and making music is political.

While the first three songs are enjoyable monitor-straddlers, brashly grinding and strutting, they don’t best suit Marr’s wispy croon. The single Hi Hello is shimmeringly brilliant, good enough to be a lost Smiths single, but it’s from the fifth track onwards that the album takes a left turn or two and becomes genuinely fascinating.

Pitchfork 60

The former Smiths guitarist absorbs the political shocks of 2016 on a characteristically polished album that imagines life in an alternate universe that values kindness, curiosity, and intelligence.