Perth Concert Hall, Perth
The world of Steven Patrick Morrissey becomes ever more a jurisdiction unto itself. Citing the prime minister's stance on hunting, the 52-year-old animal rights activist recently supported his former Smiths bandmate Johnny Marr in "forbidding" David Cameron from liking the band's music.
He has quipped that his finally finished 660-page autobiography ought to be published straight away as a Penguin Classic, while just last week he made an entire festival in Belgium go vegetarian on his behalf.
There is no doubting where Morrissey gets his mandate, at least judging by this first date of a tour of typically unfashionable towns in support of his new best-of album.
The people in the front rows ? their arms longingly outstretched, craving the faintest brush of their bequiffed idol's hand ? would probably eat nothing at all if Morrissey asked them to.
Heaven knows they've got good reason to be cheerful now. The celebrity celibate's current five-piece band ? dressed in blue flannel shirts, looking like they've just clocked-off at the brickyard ? is one of the most muscular-sounding Morrissey has led, and tonight he's on brilliant and charismatic, if typically standoffish, form.
"Do you forgive me?" he ponders, cryptically, in his most talkative moment between songs at the end of You Have Killed Me. "But I haven't done anything."
Everyday is Like Sunday into a pitch-perfect There is a Light That Never Goes Out into a racing First of the Gang to Die is just one dream combo amid an opening 30-minute slew of anti-hits. Attention seized, Morrissey debuts three brand new tracks back-to-back, each a glorious reassurance that his peerless talent for penning anthemic lyrics lacing despair with droll humour remains undimmed.
"Everybody has a date with an undertaker," he croons fatalistically during Action is My Middle Name, "a date that they cannot break."
The payoff, as the lights dim, is a rare and show-stopping airing of I Know it's Over ? a centrepiece of The Smiths' seminal 1986 album The Queen is Dead, which turned 25 this week ? its verse line "Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head" representing Exhibit A in the evidence gathered by those who say Morrissey is music's glummest soul.
It's followed by a soaring strict-to-the-original cover of Lou Reed's Satellite of Love, which seems to lift the entire building's spirits.
Hands no longer in gloves in his advancing years, Morrissey is not averse to employing shock tactics when it comes to getting his message across.
During Meat is Murder, footage of poultry and cows being brutally slaughtered is projected on to the backdrop, adding to the feeling of growing unease as the song creeps towards its ferocious apogee, when his drummer dramatically hammers a giant Chinese gong.
Morrissey returns for the encore wearing the shimmering see-through tight black shirt of a figure skater, but he seems unimpressed with the less-than-unanimous call for more in his absence.
"It is a Wednesday night," he concedes, sarcastically, before ending abruptly with a blistering One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell and a withering wave as he departs ? a bittersweet reminder that the love of this most complex of pop stars is never unconditional.
Jamie Chung Alicia Witt Radha Mitchell Melissa Rycroft Chloë Sevigny
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