Pitchfork

It's easy to mock acts for rushing out premature best-of collections after a couple of albums. As Morrissey's solo career hits the two-decade mark you'd think he's earned one-- and so he has, but this is by no means the first draft. In fact, his discographical scorecard now reads: Studio Albums 8, Compilations 6. Though some of these collections have been the result of his label changes, Morrissey's always seemed an obsessive curator of his own work: His career is studded with mixtapes made for himself, whether as monumental as The World Won't Listen or as odd as World of Morrissey.

The outrageously imbalanced Greatest Hits falls somewhat on the odd side. Eleven of its 15 tracks come from the last three years, the career renaissance kicked off by his You Are the Quarry album. Of the five full-length records he put out in the 1990s, one song survives-- the imperiously creepy "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get". It's not for casual fans who want a retrospective; it's not for new listeners who'd like to play catch-up. Who is it for?

If nothing else it's an opportunity to check the state of his art. His basic approach no longer varies much: A comfortable modern rock sound, muscular but curiously unshowy, light on instrumental hooks. The number of great Morrissey songs that are great for a reason other than Morrissey is small, and you get the feeling that's how he likes it. The music he uses these days is designed to give him maximum space-- lots of room for his still-stirring vibrato, his meandering melody lines, and the recurring themes which define his career and his public personality.

One of those themes is how potential gets used, squandered, or curdled. How do sweet boys turn into criminals, or pampered kids turn into killers? He's been writing about this since 1989's "Last of the Famous International Playboys"-- something of a touchstone song, it appears on more of his endless compilations than any other. "These are the ways in which I was raised," the song claims. "I never wanted to kill, I am not naturally evil." His explorations of the idea have become starker and more powerful as he's shifted from first-person to third-- the best of his recent songs, "First of the Gang to Die" and "The Youngest Was the Most Loved", have a sinewy economy, getting quickly to the murderous crux of their protagonists' lives.

The idea that all this is rooted in a fascination with rough trade has become a cliché of Mozology. Listening to these singles, it seems to be more about kindred spirits: If Morrissey can work out how these destinies became so twisted, he might be able to track his own strange development. This is the other main Morrissey theme-- the singer as a loveless freak of emotional nature, doomed to endless rejection, if not death-- and unlike his lost-boys songs, his explorations of the topic haven't advanced much in 20 years. "You Have Killed Me", "Let Me Kiss You", "I Have Forgiven Jesus"-- none of them are bad songs, but they're all more facets of what's become a dulled jewel.

"That's How People Grow Up", one of two new tracks, proceeds along these familiar lines: "Let me live before I die-- not me, not I." To be fair to Morrissey, nobody mines this self-deprecating seam as thoroughly or effectively, but when the song's sudden ending flips into the magnificent "Everyday Is Like Sunday", I'm reminded of how much wider and fresher his perspective used to seem. The other new track, "All You Need Is Me", is much better-- a venomous glam-rock rumble with his haters, accusing them of being more than critically obsessed with him. "There's a naked man standing laughing in your dreams/ You know who it is, but you don't like what it means": Who else would sing that?

The paradox of Morrissey is that he's generally the most confident loner around, and Greatest Hits bears this out, presenting his current work as his best ever. Some would agree-- and surely it's not his worst. Anyone who still cared when he slunk into seeming obscurity in 1997 singing songs about window cleaners and raging at long-gone bandmates must be thrilled by his renewed vigor and purpose. But even if you agree with the sentiment, it's a statement best made in interview rather than by this oddly assorted compilation.