Vauxhall And I was Morrissey’s fourth solo album and is widely regarded as one of his very best, although this writer still thinks Viva Hate has the edge. The record was produced by Steve Lillywhite and features the hit single The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get. It also saw significant commercial success for the singer with the album reaching the top 20 in the US and number one in the UK. According to Pitchfork, it was: “His most vital, entertaining and savage record since Vauxhall And I.” Read more: Johnny Marr interview Read more: Low In High School review The Essential Singles It has been stated that Vauxhall feels and sounds like it was intended to be a swansong. A final, epic recording, after which Morrissey could go out on top. Evidently we know now that this was not the case, but the album’s honest, confessional lyrics hint towards it. Stephen Street’s services were dispensed with on Morrissey’s transitional second solo full-length. With Boz Boorer yet to be employed, the singer turned to Fairground Attraction’s Mark Nevin. An odd couple for sure, with Nevin later admitting that he felt frustrated at times by Mozzer’s working methods. One of the several cut-and-paste compilations that invite a wide berth. It features some until-then unheard material that would have been better left in the studio vaults.

Morrissey‘s 1994 solo album Vauxhall And I will be reissued in June, just four months after Parlophone Label Group re-released its 1992 predecessor Your Arsenal. Co-written with Stephen Street, it’s still a constant in his live shows and the sheer elegance of the melody – burnished by strings – and heady, undulating chorus still takes your breath away.

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The solid live set doesn’t add to the reissue, nor does it fill in any glaring gaps in what’s already available in Morrissey’s live-album catalog. At best, it gives a bit of extra context: In ’94 and ’95, Britpop was on the ascendant, and Morrissey found himself trying to keep up with Oasis, Blur, and Suede—three disparate, competing bands that, at the least, agreed on the greatness and influence of the Smiths. As a solo artist, though, Morrissey never settled comfortably into the Britpop paradigm, which adds that much more of a sense of estrangement to the stoic loneliness that permeates his work, even as he should have been embracing his role as a Britpop elder statesman. It was a loved-up Morrissey who decamped to Rome for the recording of Ringleader Of The Tormentors. With producer Tony Visconti drafted in to work his magic on a dozen compositions, the album also features a cameo from Italian maestro Ennio Morricone, whose string arrangements adorn Dear God Please Help Me. The 2014 anniversary remaster includes the previously unavailable 1995 concert from Theatre Royal, London. The callused fingerprints of guitarist Jesse Tobias are all over this strident lead single from the majestic Ringleader Of The Tormentors. The highbrow references in the lyric mentions Pier Paolo Pasolini’s classic 1961 film Accattone (a tale about prostitution in the slums of Rome), the Italian actress Anna Magnani and Italian director Luchino Visconti, as Morrissey’s love affair with the Mediterranean outpost is fully consummated.

It then moves to the streets of Fairmont in Indiana, the boyhood home of James Dean. It features the film star’s school and the cemetery where he’s buried alongside footage of Rebel Without A Cause. Morrissey’s occasional boxing fetish is to the fore again on Southpaw Grammar, the sleeve features a shot of lightweight Kenny Lane. The music’s mostly pugnacious and the characters that populate its narratives are rough and tough.

The complete guide to Morrissey – The Must-Watch Videos

For someone almost as quintessentially English as the Carry On movies, Morrissey possesses a particular Irish sensibility, perhaps most pronounced in his proclivity for sadness.