Suffer little listeners

Even your rat-faced old granny knows that Hatful of Hollow is the real thing so far as early Smiths LP's go. I seriously had not listened to the whole of the first, self-titled LP in...I dunno, fifteen years? I remember it as not good (mostly because of the cringemaking "Miserable Lie") but I foolishly did not trust the 15 year old me who made that pronouncement and listened to this yesterday. I still (mostly) hated it, but for different reasons. One being that hindsight has loaned M. Marr a sheen of infallibility, whereas, in reality, the guitar tones on this are pretty awful, with lots of 80's sounding "chorus pedal"-y slop all over it. Drums are dead, and I'm not convinced that they are not actually an old Linn drum in places. Irksome!



Still, it made me listen to "Reel Around the Fountain" with different ears and lead to my latest idee du bumper sticker: