“The album’s lengthy centrepiece “I Bury The Living”, an odious slab of trundling guitar bombast, lambasts as “just honour-mad cannon-fodder” the work of soldiers whom he presumes are too stupid to understand the wars they’re involved in, when it’s clear their very survival depends on a keen appreciation of the tangled issues involved. Unlike Morrissey, whose razor-sharp grasp of geopolitical issues is illustrated by “The Girl From Tel Aviv Who Wouldn’t Kneel”, a blithe survey of Middle East turmoil in which, master of the bleeding obvious, he keeps repeating “It’s because the land weeps oil”. Well, duh.

I’m no apologist for the armed services, but if required to understand the minutiae of a conflict, I think I’d probably turn to one with first-hand experience, rather than some self-regarding flaneur who’s apparently just discovered oral sex. Especially when the second half of “I Bury The Living” consists of him mocking bereaved parents with the sneering chant “It’s funny how the war goes on without our John”, before literally ending the track with background bellowings of fake laughter at their loss. What a ghastly man.”

(Andy Gill im Independent)

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