Album sales may have been better in the first week than vauxhall, but vauxhall and I was a far superior album than this one.

And yet Vauxhall went to #1 with those numbers. This just goes to show that even in the age of downloading music, & file sharing, the charts remain fickle as ever. Quarry should have gone to #1 in the UK but I am not going to cry over it because:

1) Quarry is breathtaking and gets better with every play,

2) #2 is still great,

3) I was just in Manchester and I know Moz is #1 in the hearts of the British people.

It's Morrissey's most beautifully realised solo album. A few people on morrissey-solo.com may not like the new album as much as some of his other albums, but among most Morrissey fans out there in the real world, I think there's a consensus that this is one his finest albums. FOTGTD and IBEH haven't been matched as singles since "Viva Hate" and I can only see more success for the album if Morrissey continues to do at elast some media work and supports his next single as well as this one. Chart positions don't matter to me per se, but at least this means he's pretty much guaranteed to keep his record deal, and that comes as a relief to me, because I haven't been this excited about Morrissey's music for a long time. I'm intrigued to know where it goes from here.

broken

Jimi Bones is right - Vauxhall was and is a FAR better record than YATQ. The irony of the music business is that the general public always seem to buy an artist's weaker albums in droves and ignore their better ones. Don't know why this happens, it just appears to be so. In my local HMV, 'Kill Uncle' has sold out whereas no-one appears to be buying 'The Queen Is Dead'. Since any hardcore fan would already have these records, one can only assume that there are Moz neophytes who liked Quarry and decided to get some of his older stuff. Pity no-one can tell them what they need to get! Newcomers to the world of Moz must be made aware of his older records - if they like YATQ then by God they are in for a treat when they get 'The Queen Is Dead'!

Agreed with Jimi Bones on this one, although I'll allow that Vauxhall's greatness took some time to sink in back in 1994. But while measuring Quarry's quality level may take some time, I think it's fairly safe to say at this point that it's not going to match Vauxhall when the history books are written. V&I was really a one-off if you think about it -- it was written during a specific place and time in Morrissey's life that will be very difficult to reproduce. With the death of Mick Ronson and a couple of other close associates/friends, Moz was in a peculiar mood in '93 and '94, which lent itself to a very calm, mature, reflective, introspective, and indeed elegaic album in V&I. He even stated himself once in an interview that he'd never be able to match the heights of V&I, and that he couldn't and wouldn't try to recreate it. Southpaw, of course, was extreme proof of this sentiment. Quarry is a good album, but usually the best albums are the ones that are heartfelt, poignant, and clearly the product of an artist's personal feelings and experiences. You knew you were living that in V&I..... but while Quarry has its moments (Camden in particular but also IHFJ are clearly from the heart), much of the rest of it sounds a bit extroverted, and political. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the lack of intimacy and immediacy on Quarry that was present on Vauxhall, to me, indicates that Quarry won't ever reach the emotional heights and historical stature of his '94 masterpiece.

One other person here noted something like "after 10 years, don't you want to hear something else??". Yes, I do. And that's why I embrace Quarry - it's really good. But I will never tire of Vauxhall, and you can believe me when I say I've heard it literally hundreds of times. His rich, sonorous "crooner voice" on Vauxhall, and the highs of NowMyHeart, HoldOnToYourFriends, LifeguardSleeping, LazySunbathers, UsedToBe.... expecting Quarry to match that is just unrealistic. Instead, I'll appreciate Quarry on its own level and on its own terms.

-- J.T.Ripper