The Moz Sound: Morrissey’s Label Mates Echo His Heart-on-Sleeve Rock Sound

Damien Dempsey’s Seize the Day
Damien Dempsey owes much of his sound to his label mate/imprint relauncher Morrissey. It’s no surprise to know that Dempsey is opening for Moz on his U.S. tour. Dempsey’s English Rock rings with Morrissey’s mournful balladry and combines poetry with straight-forward didactics.

Yet, Seize the Day could also be properly in the IRE/UK Folk-influenced Rock section. Dempsey acts like a streetcorner singer calling attention to the troubles in Ireland. Picture this: Dempsey’s voice drowns out the industrial noises in the black and white film, while cars, lorries, and trains still flash past. While the violence, drugs, drink, and industrial abuse continues around him, Dempsey’s songs center our attention on taking action—like a film with blurred backgrounds but a clear focus on the man in the center of the frame, the streetcorner protestor singer.

The acoustic-laden songs blend traditional Irish folk and rock. Sometimes this is just in Dempsey’s delivery and lyrical approach; sometimes this is in the instrumentation. Perhaps as a nod to punk’s appropriation of reggae, Dempsey sometimes uses a Jamaican-styled rap-sing and beat.

The opening track, “Negative Vibes,” which is a conversation with God, yields a SongDevotion.

Thanks to Damien Dempsey and Attack/Sanctuary Records Group for the review copy.





Buddahead’s Crossing the Invisible Line
Don’t you know that I cried in silence
I was too afraid to be saved
By the hands that held me
I waited without hope.

With that first “Don’t you know” that opens up Buddahead’s Crossing the Invisible Line, the Moz sound is unmistakable, a tentative yet earnest vocal that when I find myself singing it in my head tricks me into thinking it is from Morrissey’s most recent release, You Are the Quarry. Buddahead (Raman Kia) has a more polished voice than Morrissey, but it can go from brooding to raging, from low to falsetto, shifting and ranging like Moz himself.

However, like Damien Dempsey, Buddahead isn’t a Morrissey clone. I hear echoes of others in Buddahead’s music. There’s a symphonic styling reminiscent of Duncan Sheik. John Mayer is here in the tenderness and jazzy qualities. Falsetto shifts aren’t Moz’s alone; Coldplay’s Chris Martin is never far away in Buddahead’s voice. On “Holding Me Back” as the band really opens up to an anthemic rock chorus, you’ve got something that might feel right side by side with the Folk-influenced American Rock of the Wallflowers. “Broken” has the form and embellishments of a Switchfoot song.

Keep pressing the >>| button though, and you keep finding the Moz sound. And to my mind, there’s nothing wrong with that. For all of these years since the Smiths smashed waves into the music world, many artists speak about the influence of Morrissey and Johnny Marr. Despite this, very few artists have come along who actually seem to mine that Moz sound, the voice, lyrics, and English Rock combination. It’s time, and Buddahead’s just the artist to carry out this complicated task of adapting Morrissey’s sound, making it his own.

Besides one song (“Invisible”), this album is directed at you--whoever “you” is. There seems to be one lover that is gone, and these songs keep flowing out like jilted, angry, lonely letters or journal entries talking about “what we could’ve had.” Michelle Branch’s first album, The Spirit Room, had this feel too—great songs that kept spinning around the same theme, the same person, the same question (“Why’d you break up with me?”). Read the lyrics, and you’ll feel like there’s no need to really listen to the whole album; the first songs say it all. Listen to the music, though, and you realize there’s a wide breadth of emotions, energy levels, directions, and outlooks behind that one theme. As with much pop music, without the music, the lyrics could not carry the day. Buddahead creates the musical tones to explore every cave of this broken heart.

Just as Dempsey’s first track works as a SongDevotion, so does Buddahead’s first track, “When I Fall.”

Thanks to Buddahead and Sanctuary Records Group for the review copy.