Johnny Marr Puts the Songs First on The Age of Everything

The Age of Everything is Johnny Marr’s sixth album, and its organizing principle is the song rather than the guitar part. For a musician whose playing has been studied for decades, that is a deliberate narrowing of focus. The jangle here is structural, not a solo waiting to happen.

“Beyond the Rain” sets the tone with clean, reverberant guitar that runs moodier than the standard Britpop template without leaving it. “How Come” is driven by a riff that echoes “Girl Afraid,” though the lyric is far plainer than anything Morrissey wrote. “Ophelia” rests on one of Marr’s brighter chord progressions, and “Fire With Fire” recovers some of the post-punk drive of his earlier work. The ballads reach for drama, a register that does not always sit easily in his voice.

Collaboration is the record’s second subject. Marr has always worked best against someone else’s ideas, and these songs show the difference between a guitarist with good instincts and a writer who knows what to do with them. Much of the material leans toward the psychedelic end of the Stone Roses rather than toward the Smiths, which functions as its own kind of homage.

The Age of Everything does not break new ground and does not appear to want to. It works inside a tradition Marr helped establish, which is a smaller ambition than his reputation invites, but a coherent one.