Morrissey: Wembley Arena, December 8

With Christmas looming and the nation gripped by festive spirit and momentary merriment, it’s perfect timing for a serious reality check courtesy of the iconic Morrissey. He reminds us that life is still a pigsty behind the baubles and everyday is like Sunday, regardless of whether you have a Christmas tree in the corner of your room. But don’t think for a second that he sent the Wembley Arena crowd running home to forge Prozac prescriptions en masse. Far from it.

In fine voice and quiff throughout the night, Morrissey struts assuredly onto the stage and opens with the infectious Smiths’ anthem ‘Panic’, sending the crowd into a hedonistic frenzy. The choice of opener is effectively a clever Trojan Horse that draws out our happy emotions to unravel them and force us into deep contemplation for much of the following ninety minutes of pain and suffering at various tempos.

For a man so famously anguished, Morrissey appears far more at ease and happy to be performing than he has done previously. Perhaps the answer can be found in his latest lyrics. A rendition of the tender Ringleader of the Tormentors album track ‘Dear God, Please Help Me’ contains the revelatory lines “Then he motions to me, With his hand on my knee… Now I'm spreading your legs, With mine in-between.” Explosive and candid stuff from a man whose sexuality was shrouded in mystery for years, but has apparently now found love in Rome.

Given the deeply personal nature of the song, Morrissey’s face and tear ducts were visibly moved at times, as if he was living the words rather than merely singing them. In a world swarming with nondescript, aggressively-marketed wannabes singing other people’s words by the numbers, this is refreshing to witness. Such is the man’s power, you can sense a collective welling-up amongst the audience too. This is far more than a passive concert experience where you merely listen and watch.

The song also epitomises the essence of Morrissey at his finest. In many ways it is bleak and futile in tone and content - a cry for help. Yet both composition and performance are paradoxically bathed with both hope and promise. It takes real artistic skill to weave those elements together.

Similarly, an air of morbid contemplation descends upon the arena during the epic ‘Life Is A Pigsty’. Such is the power of the song, you feel almost like you’re stood alone on a clifftop during a rainy, dark night with nowhere to run. Of course, in reality you’re stood in the same place where the Westlife fans were probably stood wetting themselves the night before. But such is the emotional spell that Morrissey can cast, you’d never know that. He’s on a different cultural planet than the lock-jawed pop stars, thicker than pig s**t with nothing to convey.

The relatively obscure track ‘Ganglord’ – a searing attack on police brutality -oozes with heartfelt passion and was suitably dedicated to slain Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. The night’s burning question - how on earth was this brilliant song only a B-Side?

The sublime ‘I Will See You In Far Off Places’ is nailed superbly, with its dig at the USA’s over zealous bombing policy. A rare live outing was also given to ‘National Front Disco’ from Your Arsenal, with lyrics that were famously misinterpreted as racist by some NME mongs. Bizarrely, not a single track from his Vauxhall and I album was played though.

Morrissey also demonstrated that he doesn’t need to be the first of the gang to diet, ripping off his shirt midway through to reveal his torso before putting on another top. Given the ever-increasing sweat patches before, this was a wise move.

Almost there. Your clueword can be found in a news article about the talkative star of Rainbow

His misanthropic diatribes are well known. So well known in fact, that it’s not too far off post modern when he delivers them. But they still hit the mark, slating Jamie Oliver and pouring scorn upon the goodness of Madonna as a human being and mother given the fact that she proudly wears a coat that resulted from sixty animals losing their lives.

The occasional song from The Smiths days pepper the setlist, such as ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’, but there’s a slight over reliance on some of the lesser Ringleader of the Tormentor tracks. Strangely, these also happen to be the singles chosen from the album.

There are several moments of pure bliss when the endorphins kick in and overwhelm the little grey cells. As soon as the brilliant opening guitar riff from 2004’s ‘First Of The Gang To Die’ kicks in, a wave of energy soars through the arena and the crowd sings along in a merry daze. The same applies to ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’ and ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’, a gloriously jovial sounding song, despite its seriousness. The Smiths’ masterpiece ‘How Soon Is Now’ manages to defy the lyrical content to provide an uplifting, anthemic moment.

The relationship between Morrissey and his audience is a joy to behold. In a similar way to Depeche Mode, it appears that there’s no common ground between hero worshipping the man and totally ignoring his output. No room for the usual concert-going casual fan, who pop along solely to hear the big hits and queue for beer whenever anything that charted outside the Top 10 is played.

Encores are usually a time when artists will save some big hit to unleash at the end of the night. Not so with Morrissey. First of the two-song encore is ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’ – a short and comparatively obscure early Smiths track that flies by quickly. Closing with ‘Don’t Make Fun Of Daddy’s Voice’ is an unexpected misfire, a 2004 B-side that deserves its status on the flip side of any single.

Deep down, we probably crave a rousing ‘Suedehead’ or ‘This Charming Man’ followed by ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’, but we’re perhaps conditioned by previous concert-going experiences. Still, Morrissey is not one to follow convention though, and deserves plaudits for this given the current cultural landscape.

Morrissey is an artist of incredible substance, with an emotional density that makes for a compulsive experience in a live environment and much, much more than this. Simply put, he does it his way.