The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The Smiths · produced by the Smiths, with Stephen Street as engineer · Rough Trade · nine tracks, two sides
Mode
The guitar-band LP as polemic: a chiming, layered guitar pop carried into rockabilly, funk and recorded noise, under one voice ironic and longing
Mythos
The sacrifice of the innocent, the child among tyrants and the sins of the fathers, each evoked and pointed at a present institution rather than built
Phase
Nine tracks on two sides; school at the opening and the slaughterhouse at the close, songs of desire and exclusion between, the home as the hinge
Presentation
Album; the UK LP of February 1985 as the band first sequenced it, nine tracks, without the single later inserted at the head of side two
Register
Irony laced with longing, comic menace at the fair, one slow waltz of tenderness, and a closing denunciation without a joke in it
Scale
A classroom, a fairground, a family home, a small dark world of longing, and a slaughterhouse
Governing Proposition
A guitar band at the height of its first fame makes its second record an accusation: cruelty in England is ordinary and institutional, taught in school, licensed in the home, enjoyed at the fair and paid for at the butcher’s, and the blow struck at the weak is one act at every scale. The frame carries the argument from school to slaughterhouse; the songs between show who receives the blows; and the record states its truth more than it finds it.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on a guitar alone. Johnny Marr’s chiming open-tuned figure sounds before the band falls in, and it is a real lift, set at the head of a song about cruelty. Then the words begin, and the subject is school: the masters of Manchester schools, “belligerent ghouls” who hit boys. A wordless falsetto passage rises over the guitars. The beauty of the playing and the cruelty of the matter arrive together, and the record does not separate them again.
Meat Is Murder is the band’s second studio album. Rough Trade released it in Britain on 11 February 1985, and Sire in the United States. Morrissey sings and wrote the words; Marr plays guitars and keyboards and wrote the music; Andy Rourke plays bass and Mike Joyce drums. The band produced it, with Stephen Street as engineer, and it was recorded in the autumn of 1984. It reached number one on the British album chart, the band’s only studio album to do so: a record on an independent label, with an accusation for a title, at the top of the national chart.
The unit is the record as the band first sequenced it: nine tracks on two sides, the UK LP. The American edition, and later British CD issues, put the single “How Soon Is Now?”, released in January 1985, at the head of side two. That song is context here, not the work. The frame the band built runs from the opening track to the close, and it is the record’s first fact: four of the nine songs take institutional or inherited cruelty as their subject, and they stand first, second, eighth and ninth, at either end, holding the rest between them.
Movement II
The second track goes to the fair. “Rusholme Ruffians” is a rockabilly swing, comic and frightening at once: the waltzer, the knife, the girl, a night out on which violence is part of the entertainment. The fair is an old place of licence, and the song gives it a real particular presence; the menace and the giddiness belong to the same ride. It is the second scale of the record’s argument, cruelty enjoyed, after the cruelty taught in the first song, and its manner is the record’s best one, irony with something darker underneath.
Between the frame’s two ends lie the songs of desire and exclusion. “I Want the One I Can’t Have” sets longing among the poor, the want of the title a condition of class as much as of love. “What She Said” is a vivid two and a half minutes of a bookish solitude, driven hard by Joyce, and the record could lose it with little loss. On side two “Nowhere Fast” glimpses the nation and its Queen as a joke, in a rockabilly manner the record has already used. These songs show who receives the blows the frame describes: the excluded speaker, the one who wants and does not have.
“Well I Wonder”, also on the second side, reaches a small private height, nearly still, and discloses the longing of the excluded with more truth than reach. The private songs are the record’s quietest truths, and they fit its law through the speaker, who is the same person the masters beat and the fair threatens. But the middle of the record could be resequenced with little loss. In its frame the sequence is the argument; between the ends it is a collection, and the songs there are held by voice and subject more than by order.
Movement III
Side one closes on the record’s summit. “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” is a slow waltzing song about a failed parting, and it ends in a long coda of layered guitars and repeated voice. It is the one place on the record that is transported rather than argued, the one long held moment of tenderness, and the one track whose form is its meaning wholly: the coda dissolves as the parting does, and to cut it would be to cut what the song knows. It is also the song listeners most often return to the record for, with the opening track and “Well I Wonder”.
The making here is Marr’s. His guitars are written and arranged to do the work of an orchestra, in the open-tuned layers of the opening track, the waltz and coda of this one, the rockabilly figure of “Rusholme Ruffians”, and on return it is the guitar writing that keeps yielding detail. Morrissey’s voice is used with control throughout, the falsetto of the opening track chief among its passages. Return to the record repays most here, in the parts, and repays less in the words, which in the two long closing tracks state their meaning on first hearing.
The cost of the making is in the production. The band produced the record itself, with Street at the desk, and the sound is thinner and drier than the songs need in places. It is a self-produced sound of 1984, and it has worn reasonably; the recording survives as issued and has stayed in print. But the record has lived in the shadow of the band’s next album, The Queen Is Dead (8.6), and its songs, this one and “The Headmaster Ritual” first, are known more than its whole.
Movement IV
The eighth track is the hinge. “Barbarism Begins at Home” turns the frame into an argument: violence passed from parent to child, the beating of children told of “unruly boys” and made a groove. It is the longest song on the record, and the title track, the next longest, follows it. Its form is funk, a genre the band had not used, and Rourke’s bass is the content of the song after its first two or three minutes: a feat of the instrument, with the percussion driving beside it.
That length is the record’s clearest fault of necessity. After its first minutes the argument is waiting while the bass and drums play, and the idea does not compel the time it takes; it is a jam left long. The funk also breaks the record’s sound world without a reason the argument supplies, one of two seams in a range that is otherwise held. The song has drive and no height. It states its meaning on first hearing, and the old shape behind it, the sins of the fathers visited on the children, is pointed at the present home and does not open into the pattern beneath.
The departures in genre are real and moderate. The record is harder and wider in sound than the debut of 1984, and it brings rockabilly, funk and recorded noise into a band whose manner had been chiming guitar pop. But that manner, Marr’s arrangements and Morrissey’s voice and wit, is carried over whole, and the new genres are borrowings, not inventions. The larger turn is of address. An independent band at the height of its first fame made its second record a polemic, and the stake, a title that turned away part of the audience, was real and was paid.
Movement V
The title track closes the record, and before the voice it puts the noise of cattle and machinery in the listener’s ear. The form here does what the argument says: the listener hears the slaughter before being told of it. The song is slow and long, without a joke in it, and it takes the record’s case past the human: the animal led to death, the sacrifice of the innocent, a figure as old as rite. But the song holds the figure at the level of argument. The heifer is a case, not a myth the record builds, and the song says its one thing many times.
Here the record’s truth is announced rather than disclosed, disclosure turned into a slogan, and the effects are literal more than dreadful: it aims at terror and reaches solemnity. The tone changes too. The record’s best manner, irony laced with longing, gives way to denunciation, the second seam. And yet the title track is the record’s one particular reach: its conversion of listeners to vegetarianism is widely reported, the clearest case in British popular music of a record that changed what people did, and the singer’s stance became part of the band’s public meaning.
What holds the record in Tier III is the depth beneath its argument. School, home, fair and slaughterhouse are joined, one cruelty at four scales, and the roster of what it holds is wide; but the joining is stated more than made, myth is evoked and never built, the nation and the crown are gestures and the sacred is absent. Its force extends the band’s own manner, and the band’s wide reach on later guitar music runs chiefly through other records. It sits a tenth above Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (7.5) and below War (7.8), another band’s turn to statement, which builds more pattern than this record does. The frame holds: it opens in the classroom and ends at the slaughterhouse.
Act III · The Twelve
Nine tracks, and the frame is compelled. “The Headmaster Ritual” must open, cruelty taught in school, and the title track must close, cruelty extended past the human; “Barbarism Begins at Home” is the hinge that makes the frame an argument, violence passed from parent to child. “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” is required on other grounds, as the record’s one long held moment of tenderness, its coda its meaning. The subtractive test bites elsewhere. “What She Said” could go with little loss; “Nowhere Fast” restates a manner and a mood; “Barbarism”, at about seven minutes, is a jam whose length its idea does not compel; the title track says its one thing many times. Required and spare parts are close to even, and the figure sits on the line.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: cruelty in England is ordinary and institutional, taught in school, licensed in the home, enjoyed at the fair and paid for at the butcher’s, and the cruelty done to the weak is the same act at every scale. The record makes the case across its frame: the masters of “The Headmaster Ritual”, “belligerent ghouls” who hit boys; the knife at the fair in “Rusholme Ruffians”; the parents of “Barbarism Begins at Home”; the slaughterhouse of the title track, its sound in the ear before the words. The joining of the human and the animal is the record’s own. Held back because the statement is mostly made, not found: the last two tracks announce rather than disclose, and the private songs disclose the longing of the excluded truly but with less reach.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Elevation comes several times, mostly warm and rueful, once dreadful. “The Headmaster Ritual” opens on Marr’s chiming open-tuned figure before the band falls in, a real lift, and a wordless falsetto passage rises over it. “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” is the summit: a slow waltzing song that ends in a long coda of layered guitars and repeated voice, the one place the record is transported rather than argued. “Well I Wonder” reaches a small private height, nearly still; “Rusholme Ruffians” a giddy one in the fairground swing. “What She Said” and “Nowhere Fast” are energy, not elevation; “Barbarism Begins at Home” has drive and no height; the title track aims at terror and reaches solemnity. Height on three or four of nine, never at the summit of the art.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Myth is evoked in places and built nowhere. The strongest archetypal structure is the sacrifice of the innocent in the title track, the animal led to death, a figure as old as rite; but the song holds it at the level of argument, and the heifer is a case, not a figure that bears the weight of the record. “The Headmaster Ritual” has the old shape of the child among tyrants, and “Barbarism Begins at Home” the sins of the fathers visited on the children, but both are pointed at present institutions and do not open into the pattern beneath. “Rusholme Ruffians” gives the fair, an old place of licence, a strong particular presence. The particular is strong throughout; the archetype is a shadow behind it.
Score: 7.1 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own debut of 1984 and the guitar pop of the British independent labels, and the turn is real and moderate. The record is harder and wider in sound than the debut, and it brings genres the band had not used: the rockabilly of “Rusholme Ruffians” and “Nowhere Fast”, the funk of “Barbarism Begins at Home”, the musique concrète of the slaughterhouse. The larger swerve is of address: an independent band at the height of its first fame makes a second record framed as a polemic, under a title that is an accusation. The stake was real, a title that turned away part of the audience, and it was paid. Held below the bar because the band’s manner is carried over whole, and the departures in genre are borrowings, not inventions.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Would changing the form change what the record knows? In its frame, much. The knowledge, that cruelty at every scale is one act, is carried by the sequence, counted here once: school at the start, the home and the slaughterhouse at the end, and between them songs of desire and exclusion that show who receives the blows. A different order would make it a collection. The form works in sound as well: the title track puts the noise of the slaughter before the voice, so that the listener hears before being told. Elsewhere form is container more than instrument. The middle songs could be resequenced with little loss, and the rockabilly and funk are exercises the argument does not need. “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” alone is its form wholly.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Forty-one years give evidence, and it is mixed. The record is returned to steadily, but chiefly as the band’s middle album, between the debut and The Queen Is Dead, and much of the return is for single songs: “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”, “The Headmaster Ritual”, “Well I Wonder”. Return repays most in the guitar writing, where Marr’s layered parts in the opening track and in “That Joke” keep yielding detail. The words repay less. “Barbarism Begins at Home” and the title track state their meaning on first hearing and add little after; the debate the title track started is a debate about its stance, not a rereading of the song. Re-examination has been sustained without changing the record’s place, which is itself a measure of what it yields.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The field is the British guitar album of the mid 1980s. The intrinsic force is modest: the record extends a manner, the band’s own, into new genres and a political frame, and its devices were already in the debut; it does not reorganise what a guitar record could do. The band’s large reach on guitar music, from the Stone Roses to Radiohead, Suede and the independent bands of the 2000s, runs chiefly through the singles and the other albums, not through this one. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it took a record on an independent label to number one in Britain, and its title track is the clearest case in British popular music of a record that changed listeners’ conduct, its conversion of listeners to vegetarianism widely reported, its stance made part of the band’s public meaning. Real reach, but narrow and particular.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Survival is weighed over forty-one years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as issued and has stayed in print. Presence is charged twice. The record most heard by many listeners is not the unit: the American edition and later British CDs inserted “How Soon Is Now?” at the head of side two, so the nine-track record as the band sequenced it has had a divided presence. And the album has lived in the shadow of the band’s next record; its songs are known more than its whole, and the title track is present as a stance more than as a song. The fabric, a self-produced sound of 1984, has worn reasonably. It stands level here with War, at 8.5.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere. Marr’s writing and arranging are the record’s craft and in places load-bearing: the open-tuned layers of “The Headmaster Ritual”, the waltz and coda of “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”, the rockabilly figure of “Rusholme Ruffians”, guitars doing the work of an orchestra. Rourke’s bass on “Barbarism Begins at Home” is a feat of the instrument, and Joyce drives “What She Said” hard. Morrissey’s voice is used with control, the falsetto of the opening track chief among its passages. The cost is in production: the band’s own, with Street at the desk, it is thinner and drier than the songs need in places, the title track’s effects are literal, and “Barbarism” is a jam left long. Skilled and distinctive, short of the summit.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the fairground swing of “Rusholme Ruffians”, comic, dark and light at once, and the slow funereal title track, without a joke in it. They obey one law in part. The law is the record’s subject, the violence ordinary life licenses, seen by those it falls on: the knife at the fair and the machinery of the slaughterhouse belong to one world, and the voice binds them. The private songs, “I Want the One I Can’t Have” and “Well I Wonder”, fit through the excluded speaker. But tone is not one law here. The record’s best manner is irony laced with longing; the title track abandons irony for denunciation, and the funk of “Barbarism Begins at Home” breaks the sound world without a reason the argument supplies. A wide range, held, with two seams.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the form. Consciousness is held, the excluded self of “I Want the One I Can’t Have” and “What She Said”; the school, an institution of the state, in “The Headmaster Ritual”; the family in “Barbarism Begins at Home”; class and the poor in “I Want the One I Can’t Have”; the crown in “Nowhere Fast”, glimpsed as a joke; desire and its failure in “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”; the natural order, the animal and its death, in the title track. The roster is wider than most albums carry, and the frame joins school, home and slaughterhouse in one argument. What holds the axis lowest is integration: the joining is stated rather than made, the nation and the crown are gestures, and the sacred is absent.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.5, then The Made at 8.1, The Unconcealment and The Sublime at 7.8. A recording whole and in print after forty-one years, its presence divided by the single later inserted into it; guitar writing that does the work of an orchestra and a bass part that is a feat of the instrument; a stated truth, that cruelty at every scale is one act, carried by a frame from school to slaughterhouse; and height on three or four of nine tracks, with the long coda of “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” at the summit.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.8: consciousness, the school, the family, class, the crown, desire and the animal all present, but joined by statement more than made one, with the nation a gesture and the sacred absent. Then The Archetypal Deep at 7.1: the sacrifice of the innocent, the child among tyrants and the sins of the fathers evoked and pointed at present institutions, never built. Then The Inevitable, The Swerve and Pressure on Tradition at 7.5: two short songs and the length of two long ones that fail the subtractive test, departures in genre that are borrowings, and a force that extends the band’s own manner.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.5 against a threshold of 7.5, on the line and with no room. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.6, The Made at 8.1, The Inner Law at 7.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable meets the bar of 8.5 exactly, but The Unconcealment at 7.8, The Swerve at 7.5, Pressure on Tradition at 7.5 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.1 fall short. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 7.1, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.8. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.6, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released by Rough Trade in Britain on 11 February 1985, the nine-track UK LP in its original order, produced by the band with Stephen Street as engineer: The Headmaster Ritual, Rusholme Ruffians, I Want the One I Can’t Have, What She Said, That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore; Nowhere Fast, Well I Wonder, Barbarism Begins at Home, Meat Is Murder. The American edition on Sire and later British CD issues, which insert the single “How Soon Is Now?” (January 1985) at the head of side two, are evidence for presence, not the object. Judged from knowledge of the recording, its documented making and its reception; no recording, sleeve or lyric sheet was in hand. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond a fragment of four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the studio where the record was made, the exact track lengths and running time, and the sound at the close of “Well I Wonder”, are not given.