Johnny Marr’s fifth solo album, The Age Of Everything, comes out on Friday and the guitarist has given an interview to the NME about the new record.
What did we find out that was new? Well, it seems the guitarist has long been an admirer of Robert Smith, which is interesting given that the Cure man has never had much good to say about The Smiths.
When the interviewer mentions that the track Fire With Fire has a ‘Cure vibe’, Marr agrees. “There were a couple of Cure-y moments on (previous album) Fever Dreams too, like Aerial,” he says.
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“When The Cure came out, I thought of Robert Smith as a guitar player. He’s a frontman, but what he was doing on Seventeen Seconds was really very much on his own and really on point. That was a few years before I came out. I saw them a couple of times when I was 16 or 17 and really liked them.”
Expanding on a theme, he continued: “I’ve actually covered Depeche Mode’s I Feel Love, and when I did The Tracers on (his 2018 album) Call The Comet, I woke up to Maxine Peake praising me because it sounded like Sisters Of Mercy. That was great. They were the first big band that The Smiths supported, so it is in my DNA.”
Much of The Age Of Everything, though, sticks to the guitar pop that Marr has long traded in. “I’m able to write catchy tunes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There will be times for me to write my acoustic opus where I get miserable. I’ve taken the liberty of sounding like other things over time and I always get, ‘Oh, that sounds a little bit like what you were doing with Electronic’ or, ‘Oh, that’s a bit Smiths-y’, but really it’s no more complicated than, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’”
And conversation also turned to a current politician who seems (unlike some) to be utterly genuine in his love of Marr’s old band. Last month British Prime Minister Andy Burnham was caught on camera playing Rusholme Ruffians (from The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder) on guitar with a Ukrainian soldier during a visit to Kyiv. “It’s heartening to see any Labour leader last six weeks without getting absolutely piled in on by everyone,” is Marr’s considered take.
“Some people are alright,” he added. “I understand cool by association when I see it, do you know what I mean?”
