From The Smiths to Electronic to The The to Kirsty MacColl to Gorillaz to Beth Orton to Billie Eilish, Johnny Marr has proved himself a musically inquisitive, skilled and imaginative collaborator. Over the last decade-and-a-half he’s also built himself a steady solo career. The Age of Everything is his fifth fully solo album. Unfortunately, it’s not very interesting.
Marr long ago proved he has an eclectic musical palette but there’s also a side to him, as per his past membership of Modest Mouse and The Cribs, which revels in the comfort of meat’n’potatoes indie rock. This comes to the fore here. He’d even get away with that, as so many have before him, if he mustered songs that were catchy or had an underlying vehemence. Neither is the case.
Marr, a likeable pop culture figurehead, true keeper of The Smiths’ flame, has said of the album that it’s “been the most cathartic… an inescapable idea. It seemed to sum up the way I think a lot of people are feeling.” He aims to connect with “a sense of overwhelm in the culture brought about by technology”. None of this comes across.
Opener “Spin” is a modest rocker that begins, “Look alive now everything's coming”, but it doesn’t feel urgent. Later, on the jangly “It’s Time”, a song that starts promisingly, there are environmentalist leanings: “Everybody ain't makin’ it/Everybody is crazy/Burning up the sun and moon”. If the album had more sonic kick, it would matter less that it isn't lyrically striking. Then again, when a punchier mood is conjured on “Ophelia”, the overall impact still fails to lodge in the memory.
One song, “That Feeling”, is more vibrant, riding a bass-led rhythm section vaguely akin to Sandinista-era Clash, but it then settles to the usual. What more to say? Repeated listens here have inspired little in the way of vivid feelings or response. The Age of Everything whispers, unfairly, that rock music has become innately stodgy.
Below: watch the video for "It's Time" by Johnny Marr
