Morrissey thrills, quiets Academy crowd

With its red velvet seats and tiered balcony, the Academy of Music is an odd place for a rock concert. But Morrissey made himself at home amid the plush surroundings on Sunday night. "This isn't rock and roll," he told the nearly sold-out house, putting on a thick upper-crust accent. "This is theatah."

At once serious and self-mocking, the gesture neatly encapsulated the singer's fondness for playing extremes against the middle. As a solo artist and with the Smiths, whose 1980s recordings introduced Americans alienated by the machismo of punk and hardcore to irony and lyricism, the 49-year-old Brit has perfected the art of simultaneously over- and underplaying, matching melodramatic excess to a caustic, lacerating wit.

Even in an era when continental sophistication has lost much of its Stateside appeal, Morrissey still commands a formidable following of devoted fans, who made numerous attempts to puncture the phalanx of security guards at the lip of the stage and grab a piece of their idol. His soul-baring lyrics have struck a chord in the hearts of the melancholically inclined for nearly three decades, but he remained, as always, just out of reach. Even when he ripped off his dress shirt at the climax of "Let Me Kiss You," he undercut the moment by pairing it with the song's reference to "someone you physically despise."

On Years of Refusal, his third solo album in five years, and his best in three times as long, Morrissey takes a more aggressive stance than in the past. He's still alone and unloved, but he's decided he likes it that way. The attitude carries over into the album's hard-driving music, which in turn infected most of the songs in his 90-minute set.

The ferocity of his five-piece band, which plays most of the music on the record as well, lit a fire under "Something Is Squeezing My Skull," which asserts the singer's preference for natural instability over medicated tranquility. "I know by now you think I should have straightened myself out," he sang, his voice dripping with sharp disdain. "Thank you - drop dead."

But the uniformity of the band's attack ate into the complexity of the Smiths songs that dotted the set. Rather than playing the drama of Morrissey's quavering voice against the clean lines of Johnny Marr's guitar, his current band tried to match him jab for jab.

On "Death of a Disco Dancer," the effects fed off each other in an escalating spiral, falling finally to earth with the ring of a giant gong. But too often, the added weight merely flattened the songs out, leaving them inert and breathless.

Drawing more than half the set from Years of Refusal and 2004's You Are the Quarry (although bizarrely omitting the new album's best song, "That's How People Grow Up"), Morrissey bypassed the highlights of his solo career's first half. But he filled the middle of the set with a succession of draggy, midtempo songs that quieted the initially raucous crowd, squandering energy he never managed to recover.

Nobody knows how to make mopery as thrilling as Morrissey, but lassitude is something else.