Declaring a man to be a "god-like genius" several months shy of his 5oth birthday implies he has no more worlds left to conquer. It's been like this for Johnny Marr since before his 25th birthday, when he co-wrote a couple dozen perfect pop songs with Morrissey and then departed for a series of celebrity rocker odd jobs in other people's bands (including Modest Mouse, the Pretenders, Talking Heads, and Pet Shop Boys). To say Marr ran up the score on his legacy with the Smiths, and has been treading water ever since, would be reductive. But Marr has been playing with house money for as long as many of today's indie-poppers chasing "Hand in Glove" and "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" have been alive. Johnny Marr is an institution now-- and institutions are supposed to stay in the same place, right where we left them, until they topple over.
Marr (hopefully) has a long way to go before that happens. So, now that his extended tenure as a gun for hire appears to have been put on hold, he's set about making his first proper solo record, The Messenger. (Marr's 2003 album with the Healers, Boomslang, is apparently being passed off as an equal collaboration between Marr and whoever else was in the Healers.) If it seems like a strange time for Johnny Marr to finally make a record under his own name, that's because it is. The Messenger is precisely the big, bright, jangly guitar rock LP that Smiths fans would have killed for in 1994. The record's immediately appealing "Smiths plus 20 pounds of muscle" sound would have fit in perfectly alongside Oasis' Definitely Maybe and the Verve's A Storm in Heaven on a typical Anglophile's CD rack 20 years ago*.* In 2013, though, The Messenger exists in its own, hermetically sealed context.
As Marr recently told Pitchfork, The Messenger was consciously crafted to appeal to his old fans. "I wanted it to sound effortless, not like I was trying to reinvent the wheel," he said. "I'm not interested in trying to have people who might like other kinds of music follow me. I don't want to please them." Based on this criteria, The Messenger is a success. The guitar tones on this record are fantastic-- which is to say, they instantly bring to mind the dense, intricate, and yet lightly airy riffs that Marr strummed over Morrissey's asexual witticisms in the mid-1980s. "European Me" is manna for Marr obsessives, opening with a stuttering six-string barrage that quickly blossoms into a wondrous expanse of chiming Rickenbackers. The title track is another instant grabber, marrying disco rhythms with Marr's spidery guitar over a bed of mood-setting synths. Lead-off track "The Right Thing Right" is pretty awesomely Smiths-like, too, with Johnny throwing in some frisky Keith Richards licks in for good measure.
The Messenger begs to be received on its own modest terms and its pleasures-- Marr's guitar playing, the no-frills production, those big and cavernous choruses-- wear off after prolonged exposure. Marr is still a top-flight musician, but he's not really a true solo artist. As a vocalist, he's a warm if unexceptional presence; he tends to get lost inside his own immaculately constructed guitar cathedrals, particularly when he has nothing to say in his lyrics. For "I Want the Heartbeat", Marr effectively grinds a metallic bass line against his own over-amped guitar, but the song's narrative about a man falling in love with a machine is a dopey metaphor for our culture's obsession with technology. In the latter half of The Messenger, even Marr's playing starts to lose some of its vigor; "Say Demesne" is draggy, late-period U2 balladry for aging Gen-Xers.
The best parts of The Messenger have a sideman's sensibility; Marr is great at doodling in the margins but falters when it comes to filling up the center with substance. The result is a record that grabs your attention initially, but is unlikely to hold it in the long view. Not that it matters-- Marr was a legend before this record, and he'll still be one after it. The Messenger won't be included in the body of work that made Marr great, but it's a solid approximation of his strengths.
