Mild Mannered Army: "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Southpaw Grammar at Thirty" (January 3, 2025)

Spotted this on Twitter a few minutes ago.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Southpaw Grammar at Thirty

Fourteen days after Blur and Oasis fought the ludicrously overblown “battle of Britpop”, a race to be top of the pops between two of the biggest bands in the country with two of the wor…

mildmanneredarmy.wordpress.com

 

[On his way out]

This article is like Fiona Dodwell with footnotes. It has lots of interesting references and context but the hagiography is extreme. I enjoyed revisiting the album and the time. Yet SG remains the disappointing start of Moz's descent from Olympian heights.

Please spare me the Britpop bashing. Morning Glory walks all over this album. Country House v Roll With It was genuinely exciting, with all the bravado leading up to it. The sort of TOTP drama SPM once loved and clearly misses.

The writer tells of their particular devotion: I hated the fact that I wasn’t someone... I knelt before him, took his hand in mine, kissed it, and then with his loving eyes fixed on mine I stepped off the stage and into the pit. As I walked past the roaring crowd I tripped over my own feet and broke my ankle. I spent the rest of the gig with the first aiders, refusing to leave the venue until the concerts end, and then spent the night in hospital and the following few weeks in a cast. It didn’t stop me being in attendance the following night at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.
"No, you medical imbeciles, I shall not leave this pallet for treatment! Do you not understand that HE OF THE LOVING EYES might yet play Shoplifters? Never fear Stephen, I shall let my gangrene fester before you, in Edinburgh next eventide!" It is rare for the pilgrim to be crippled by meeting their saviour. PS MildManneredArmy you are someone and don't forget it.

The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils is my favourite track by far: "You understand change and you think it's essential. But when your profession is humiliation...". Moz really should do some more collabs with Shostakovich.

The Operation (more Pirahna Bros than Krays) and Southpaw are similarly ambitious but don't have the hooks or the lyrics. You can't just play the "experimental" card to excuse an epic meandering. MildManneredArmy makes this a virtue though, writing in the best defensive Dodwell tones thus:
While it is possible to sympathise with those who have criticised the song for its length and lack of focus, the truth is that when you are dealing with an artist and not a pawn in pops game, you will occasionally be confronted with something more challenging. Deal with it.

Boy Racer, Best Friend on the Payroll, just slight throwaways that at least don't linger. Reader Meet Author is a notch better. It should have been first single.

Dagenham Dave "often hilarious"? There's only 6 lines! That lead single has El Tel on the cover larking about- what happened to a bit of effort? Compare the surrounding lead singles: We Hate It, The More You, Alma Matters, Irish Blood. He's just faxing it in on Southpaw Grammar.

"Do your best and don't worry" would be a more fitting, undemanding, album title. Or maybe: "Never mind the quality, feel the prog".

As the article says about closer Southpaw (10min3sec) According to Johnny Bridgwood the song would have been even longer but the tape ran out. I can just imagine an exhausted Lillywhite and Supple in the booth:
"Sorry fellas, no more tape for that last 17 minute jam"
"Could we just get more tape then?"
"No- I think we're done."

 

[Ryan]

The exit music on "Southpaw' still gives me the chills, and I would put this track in my top 3 Moz songs. "You Must please Remember" & Nobody Loves Us" absolutely brilliant. 30 years....."Time Moves to fast"

Absolutely, that exit music is both tragic and cinematic. Needs to be done live.

 

[Seymour Glass]

Why the Carson McCullers reference?

 

[Multi]

This article is like Fiona Dodwell with footnotes. It has lots of interesting references and context but the hagiography is extreme. I enjoyed revisiting the album and the time. Yet SG remains the disappointing start of Moz's descent from Olympian heights.

Please spare me the Britpop bashing. Morning Glory walks all over this album. Country House v Roll With It was genuinely exciting, with all the bravado leading up to it. The sort of TOTP drama SPM once loved and clearly misses.

The writer tells of their particular devotion: I hated the fact that I wasn’t someone... I knelt before him, took his hand in mine, kissed it, and then with his loving eyes fixed on mine I stepped off the stage and into the pit. As I walked past the roaring crowd I tripped over my own feet and broke my ankle. I spent the rest of the gig with the first aiders, refusing to leave the venue until the concerts end, and then spent the night in hospital and the following few weeks in a cast. It didn’t stop me being in attendance the following night at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.
"No, you medical imbeciles, I shall not leave this pallet for treatment! Do you not understand that HE OF THE LOVING EYES might yet play Shoplifters? Never fear Stephen, I shall let my gangrene fester before you, in Edinburgh next eventide!" It is rare for the pilgrim to be crippled by meeting their saviour. PS MildManneredArmy you are someone and don't forget it.

The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils is my favourite track by far: "You understand change and you think it's essential. But when your profession is humiliation...". Moz really should do some more collabs with Shostakovich.

The Operation (more Pirahna Bros than Krays) and Southpaw are similarly ambitious but don't have the hooks or the lyrics. You can't just play the "experimental" card to excuse an epic meandering. MildManneredArmy makes this a virtue though, writing in the best defensive Dodwell tones thus:
While it is possible to sympathise with those who have criticised the song for its length and lack of focus, the truth is that when you are dealing with an artist and not a pawn in pops game, you will occasionally be confronted with something more challenging. Deal with it.

Boy Racer, Best Friend on the Payroll, just slight throwaways that at least don't linger. Reader Meet Author is a notch better. It should have been first single.

Dagenham Dave "often hilarious"? There's only 6 lines! That lead single has El Tel on the cover larking about- what happened to a bit of effort? Compare the surrounding lead singles: We Hate It, The More You, Alma Matters, Irish Blood. He's just faxing it in on Southpaw Grammar.

"Do your best and don't worry" would be a more fitting, undemanding, album title. Or maybe: "Never mind the quality, feel the prog".

As the article says about closer Southpaw (10min3sec) According to Johnny Bridgwood the song would have been even longer but the tape ran out. I can just imagine an exhausted Lillywhite and Supple in the booth:
"Sorry fellas, no more tape for that last 17 minute jam"
"Could we just get more tape then?"
"No- I think we're done."

i don't have much of an argument towards most of this, except that the lyrics to Southpaw are legit and no, the album should not be called "Do your best and don't worry."

 

[gashonthenail]

Why the Carson McCullers reference?

I thought that reference captured quite well the feel of the album in one line. There is certainly a sense about the album that it was made just after the ending of the relationship with Jake. Moz tried not being on his own, but it's not gonna work out...
Moz has also mentioned before being a fan of Carson McCullers.

 

[Banbury Moz Army]

Absolutely, that exit music is both tragic and cinematic. Needs to be done live.

Absolutely mate

 

[Ste Wriggers]

Spotted this on Twitter a few minutes ago.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Southpaw Grammar at Thirty

Fourteen days after Blur and Oasis fought the ludicrously overblown “battle of Britpop”, a race to be top of the pops between two of the biggest bands in the country with two of the wor…

mildmanneredarmy.wordpress.com

This may be fairly true factwise but everyone including the NME did exactly the same when Morrissey released Our Frank from what was to be the piss-poor album Kill Uncle. Everyone was referring to it as Alf Wank. I thought it was a great and funny track, typical Moz. This assassination attempt was then repeated for the pretty unfunny and lame Dagenham Dave release and another piss poor album Southpaw. It was way off the mark for being anything like his Cool Brittania opus, not because of NME but because his fans voted with their feet and retreated in their droves, SO this time it stuck...because Southpaw and its follow up Maladjusted are just that, piss weak Morrissey albums. Nobody Loves Us was wasted...as it's the only really great track Morrissey released between Vauxhall and his astonishing Irish Blood English Heart 2004 comeback.

 

[Eldritch]

It's by far the least conventional album Morrissey has ever made. Which is to be applauded for sure, but the song selection lets it down. Teachers... is a great opener, but does it really need to be over 11 minutes long? Surely 7--8 minutes would have been enough? Reader Meet Author is excellent and Boy Racer is fine, but after that the quality plummets. The Operation, Dagenham Dave, Best Friend and Do Your Best are all laughably trite. Southpaw puts the album back on track but it's too late to redeem the thing. Leaving Nobody Loves Us out was a terrible decision, and if that lot really was all they had, they should have gone back to the studio.

 

[gordyboy9]

Still, Alma Matters is one of his most treasured songs, to this day. What lets Southpaw Grammar down is its lack of a hit song. Apart from its shortness of only 8 songs.

It was criminal to let Nobody Loves Us pass by, too.

yeah thewlis for me nobody loves us would be in my top 5 and has been for a long time.

 

[April Snow]

I actually love Dagenham Dave and the video for it .................it just makes me smile & I found it clever. But I am only a newbie I guess so it is all fresh and new to me this last year, but this one I really liked and Boy Racer. They are just fun songs to listen to and romp along at a great pace, they just make me feel happy with the beat.

 

[luiz felipe scolari]

I really like Southpaw Grammar as an album, but I have to say, NME had it spot on when they described Dagenham Dave as 'a load of piss poor old crap'. By far the weakest song on there - and indeed the weakest song on its own twelve inch single as well. As everyone has been saying for 30 years, Nobody Loves Us was the best 'Southpaw' song, and should have been a single and on the album. I suppose the fact that it wasn't only adds to its allure...

 

[gashonthenail]

I really like Southpaw Grammar as an album, but I have to say, NME had it spot on when they described Dagenham Dave as 'a load of piss poor old crap'. By far the weakest song on there - and indeed the weakest song on its own twelve inch single as well. As everyone has been saying for 30 years, Nobody Loves Us was the best 'Southpaw' song, and should have been a single and on the album. I suppose the fact that it wasn't only adds to its allure...

Maybe it wasnt such a bad choice though. Dave is a throwaway pop song that is radio friendly. Nobody Loves Us isnt really daytime radio fare.

 

[Phranc & Open]

Dagen'am Dagen'am...

 

[Jamie]

It's by far the least conventional album Morrissey has ever made. Which is to be applauded for sure, but the song selection lets it down. Teachers... is a great opener, but does it really need to be over 11 minutes long? Surely 7--8 minutes would have been enough? Reader Meet Author is excellent and Boy Racer is fine, but after that the quality plummets. The Operation, Dagenham Dave, Best Friend and Do Your Best are all laughably trite. Southpaw puts the album back on track but it's too late to redeem the thing. Leaving Nobody Loves Us out was a terrible decision, and if that lot really was all they had, they should have gone back to the studio.

The problem is there was a paucity of material to begin with. For whatever reason, whether due to the halcyon period he was in at the time Vauxhall was released (whispers in the press of "retirement") or the subsequent split with Jake Walters, no other material beyond the contents of the "Boxers" single, "Sunny" and the stragglers from the Miraval session ("Honey You Know Where To Find Me" and "You Should Have Been Nice To Me") appears to have been recorded. The only demo/song apparently left attempted-but-unfinished in that period was "Laughing Anne."

Basically, Southpaw and the "Dagenham Dave" single contain the songs that carried over from Miraval to SARM/Hook End Manor, with the exception of "The Operation" (no Miraval version has ever come to light) and "Do Your Best And Don't Worry." The latter was definitively created for the new sessions in March-April 1995 and was the last song completed, hence Boz on bass.

I believe it was Jo Slee who claimed in the Uncut article from 1998 ("Manchester's Answer to the H-Bomb") that M was very depressed in that era. So whether hale and hearty in the wake of Vauxhall or down in the dumps, he may well have been not focused on writing or blocked from a creative perspective. It could well be that he would have preferred to write/record additional material but just wasn't up to it. The band was in such fine form coming off the "In Person" tour that he seemed to have been in a mindset to "let the music do the talking," one way or the other. "Do Your Best And Don't Worry" may be emblematic of his approach to both life and art at the time.

 

[luiz felipe scolari]

My fantasy track listing for Southpaw: I would leave side one as it is, I think all four songs are great. The Teachers... might be overlong, but it confounds your expectations of what a Moz album should be like, and I think it does it well. Reader, Boy Racer and The Operation are all great, punchy, muscular songs whose aggressive lyrics make it clear that this is a different album to Vauxhall. Side two, however, contains IMO the two weakest songs - Dagenham Dave and Best Friend On The Payroll. I would replace them, respectively, with Boxers and Nobody Loves Us. I think that would make side two just as strong as side one in terms of the quality of the songs. Plus, including Boxers would fit in with the general 'male aggression' theme of the album, and with the cover art.

 

[Eldritch]

The problem is there was a paucity of material to begin with.

A great post, Jamie. But I have always wondered why he was in such a rush to get Southpaw out. Vauxhall was merely a year old and of course there was the Boxers EP too. If he was suffering from depression, surely he should have taken a break and not barge forward with an album clearly lacking from the dearth of good songs. You Should Have Been Nice to Me too would have improved the album in opinion.

 

[Phranc & Open]

The problem is there was a paucity of material to begin with. For whatever reason, whether due to the halcyon period he was in at the time Vauxhall was released (whispers in the press of "retirement") or the subsequent split with Jake Walters, no other material beyond the contents of the "Boxers" single, "Sunny" and the stragglers from the Miraval session ("Honey You Know Where To Find Me" and "You Should Have Been Nice To Me") appears to have been recorded. The only demo/song apparently left attempted-but-unfinished in that period was "Laughing Anne."

Basically, Southpaw and the "Dagenham Dave" single contain the songs that carried over from Miraval to SARM/Hook End Manor, with the exception of "The Operation" (no Miraval version has ever come to light) and "Do Your Best And Don't Worry." The latter was definitively created for the new sessions in March-April 1995 and was the last song completed, hence Boz on bass.

I believe it was Jo Slee who claimed in the Uncut article from 1998 ("Manchester's Answer to the H-Bomb") that M was very depressed in that era. So whether hale and hearty in the wake of Vauxhall or down in the dumps, he may well have been not focused on writing or blocked from a creative perspective. It could well be that he would have preferred to write/record additional material but just wasn't up to it. The band was in such fine form coming off the "In Person" tour that he seemed to have been in a mindset to "let the music do the talking," one way or the other. "Do Your Best And Don't Worry" may be emblematic of his approach to both life and art at the time.

Great, Jamie. Really!

The departure of Jake and his influence on Morrissey's lyrics in 93/94 should certainly be examined more closely by biographers. Apparently he was really in a relationship for the first time and that with his ‘brother (in spirit)’. In the autobiography, he expresses quite indirectly what significance Jake Walters had for him, but in retrospect it becomes increasingly clear, that he was not in the best mood and condition from 1995 onwards.

‘Honey you know where to find me’ and “You should have been nice to me”, which appeared early (December 1994) in the Miraval sessions, were completely discarded and “Best friend on the payroll” dealt with the limitation and the end of the relationship with the “errand boy”. Jake Walters decided in favour of his wife and against Morrissey, if I remember correctly. He left him heartbroken, which, he tried to channel with a rushed organized UK tour and the most brutal record of his career. I like all the tracks on the record, by the way, even if some of them seem too simple and too rough. You can literally imagine Morrissey shadowboxing to them.

 

[Thewlis]

And let’s not forget the very worst toured album, too. Leaving the Bowie tour after just a handful of shows, ill and depressed, without even telling the band. It was certainly a low point in his career at that moment, and the court case was just around the corner, too.

It took him nearly a decade to recover and resurrect his career.

 

[Phranc & Open]

And let’s not forget the very worst toured album, too. Leaving the Bowie tour after just a handful of shows, ill and depressed, without even telling the band. It was certainly a low point in his career at that moment, and the court case was just around the corner, too.

It took him nearly a decade to recover and resurrect his career.

I gave back my Bowie tickets for Frankfurt 01/96 because Morrissey pulled out.

 

[gashonthenail]

And let’s not forget the very worst toured album, too. Leaving the Bowie tour after just a handful of shows, ill and depressed, without even telling the band. It was certainly a low point in his career at that moment, and the court case was just around the corner, too.

It took him nearly a decade to recover and resurrect his career.

It was certainly a dark, brooding and 'gloomy' album for the mid 90s. When everyone else was partying and doing drugs. Moz just did his own thing. Maybe he foresaw the 'come down' that was inevitable. Pulp's This Is Hardcore came in 1998, which I think was very much the end of the 'Britpop' era.