Sunday 28/05/06 Morrissey @ The Palladium, London

The London Palladium, a theatre originally built in 1910 and currently playing host to a Frank Sinatra musical, is, on first impression, an unlikely venue for Morrissey to be playing, let alone one as part of a three night stint culminating in tonight’s end of UK tour show (a series of over thirty dates let’s not forget). But it’s actually a perfect fit. Evocative of many of Morrissey’s beloved fifties black and white icons that regularly graced The Smiths’ wonderful sleeves back in the eighties, the stately grandeur of the Palladium’s interior also reminds us somewhat of Morrissey’s own, most recent comeback: ‘Ringleader Of The Tormentors’, the grandest, most opulent record of his career.

Discarding the often cheap-sounding instrumentation that blighted ‘You Are The Quarry’ for properly lush, real orchestration, production legend Tony Visconti (name-checked tonight on ‘You Have Killed Me’) has helped Morrissey craft a sublime, occasionally indulgent record that glistens with class and the sound of an icon clearly working at the peak of their confidence, any hint of potential self-parody thankfully kept to a minimum. The best news is that it sounds even better live.

“If you’re meaningless they praise you, if you’re meaningful they hate you” says Morrissey, his black dinner suit (complete with bow tie), ringing like some curmudgeonly subversion of the aforementioned Ol’ Blue Eyes himself. Of course, we wouldn’t want him any other way. The Palladium feels surprisingly intimate for a venue with three floors, and as a result it’s the closest we’ve come to witness the almost cliché-like levels of hysteria and devotion that he’ll forever be associated with; downstairs looks like the crowd at a Fall Out Boy concert, such is the crush as people reach out in the vain hope of touching The Great One. Indeed it’s a surprise that the first stage invader only makes it five songs in, during an impassioned ‘I’ll Never Be Anybody’s Hero Now’. Man-handled by two of the bouncers, Morrissey still stretches out a hand and makes contact with the woman, without missing a word. It’s a great moment, not that the opening trio of ‘Panic’, ‘First Of The Gang To Die’ and new single ‘The Youngest Was The Most Loved’ could be anything but utterly exhilarating.

There’s a drama to the new tracks that Morrissey seems keen to highlight, from sinking to one knee while singing “There is no such thing in life as normal”, to the emotional highpoint ‘Life Is A Pigsty’, the last three minutes of which Morrissey spends hunched in front of the drumkit, his back to the audience and his head lowered. Someone, somewhere in this audience just took what could be one of the quintessential Morrissey pictures. Damn we wish we had our camera. Of The Smiths back catalogue we’re also treated to ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’, ‘How Soon Is Now’ and a final encore of ‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before’. Of these there’s not much else to be said.

It’s certainly been an eventful last month for the man also known as Him (how many more different names can we give him?): booed at his first Palladium date, buying an entire meat stand for charity, seeing his beloved West Ham losing what was a spectacular FA Cup Final (‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ is, ironically, played before his entrance), and worst of all, being hailed by Conservative leader David Cameron. But lying on his back in the centre of the stage, illuminated by a spotlight and shirtless as the closing notes of ‘Stop Me…’ ring out across the cramped auditorium, the only thing we can think is that this won’t last forever, but for now everything’s fine. There is a single word emblazoned on the drum skin: Happiness.