Although Morrissey's new album, "Live At Earls Court", released today, is handed a 5/5 grade by Allmusic, I beg to differ.

The man's voice is better than ever. Really. OK, so I, too, miss his nasal howls and yelps from his forlorn days, but this is too good to be missed. His ways of tweaking by-now well-recognised vocal passages from his solo career are excellent, and his way of forging words and sentences live is still stunning (which is, frankly, what I expect of him until the end of his life), e.g. turning the old "As the flames rose to her roman nose/And her walkman started to melt" from "Bigmouth Strikes Again" to "As the flames rose to her roman nose/And her iPod started to melt". And do note that his voice is miles better than on the Smiths' live album ("Rank") and on his first solo live album, "Beethoven Was Deaf", but that this album is mixed quite differently; the sound of the crowd isn't as easily heard, and although his voice is greatly improved, it swallows the mix. The guitars, the drums, the keyboards are at times too far below Mozza's voce.

The thing that's consoling about this is the fact that Morrissey twists his voice like no other pop singer I know of, who's alive today. He really shapes the songs with his vocal twists. Sure, the yelps aren't quite here anymore, but they're substituted by growls. There is a lot of "arrrr" in the mix, without making it pirate-y.

I miss the feedback from guitars and (what I believe is, but am most certainly not sure of) the spontaneous bursts of twanginess that Boorer/Whyte provided on "Beethoven Was Deaf". The sound on the new live album is too dense. I want to hear the echo, the reverb of the hall he played in!

Well, if you're tired of Moz, try to swerve into David Byrne's newly started radio channel.