Johnny Marr
Call The Comet

It only took Morrissey a few months (exactly six since the last work of the Smiths) to kickstart a solo career that, through ups and downs, declines and resurrections, has brilliantly reached today. For Johnny Marr, on the other hand, it took several years and various attempts with projects of different nature (The The, Electronic, Healers, 7 Worlds Collide besides collaborations with The Cribs and Modest Mouse) until achieving the perfect balance with the excellent solo debut five years ago.

Not content with his regained artistic freedom, the good old Johnny immediately locked himself in the studio and just a year later gave birth to a second solo work, slightly less inspired and clearly a product of the haste for confirmation (despite a sensational hit like “Easy Money”). We can, therefore, consider this new “Call The Comet” as Marr's first album truly thought out and full of awareness, since it is certainly not a debut and this time a good four years have passed since the previous trial.

Awareness that is fully felt in these eleven tracks, clearly the offspring of a project conceived and studied down to the smallest detail. Marr imagines a world that is not ours, in a not-too-distant future (unlike what his former companion Morrissey does, who paints daily life his way) and draws eleven inspired frescoes that span the most diverse atmospheres.

There's the dear old Britpop, and in some pieces like the opener “Rise,” “Hey Angel,” “Day In Day Out,” and the closing “A Different Gun,” it's crystal clear how the sound of the Smiths' guitar was the seed of the entire movement. There are harder episodes like the first spectacular single “The Tracers” that plays with post-punk and has its strong point in a frenetic drum pattern. There is also a fun self-citation in the second single “Hi Hello,” practically a reboot of “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.”

Also fully convincing are the tracks that “dare” a little more; there's the electric mantra of the hypnotic “New Dominions,” the rawer Depeche Mode of “Actor Attractor,” and the updated version of The Cure in “My Eternal.” The main course, however, is “Walk Into The Sea,” a six-minute psychedelic epic that flows until breaking through in a torrential wall of guitars.

On the third attempt, Johnny Marr hits the best record of his fresh solo career and claims his role as a “founding father” of a certain classic yet evergreen British guitar style. “Call The Comet” is a surprisingly fresh and inspired album for being birthed from the mind of a seasoned man in his fifties, making it all the more surprising.

Best track: “Walk Into The Sea”