Allmusic writes in its review that The Messenger stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the greatness that was The Smiths: “Considerable portions of The Messenger are filled with riffs and guitar textures Marr could conceivably have used during the band’s brief life, and the effect isn’t a desperate attempt at recapturing the past but rather an embrace of his core strengths as both a guitarist and songwriter. The latter is as crucial as the former, perhaps more so, as Marr’s painterly skills as a guitarist have never been in question while his steadfast avoidance of releasing new songs under his name has obscured how he was the sonic architect of the Smiths. One quick listen to The Messenger brings all his signatures rushing back – the intricate, intertwining arrangements, the insistent riffs finding a counterpoint in the elastic yet precise melodies, a romance with the past that doesn’t negate the present. Marr has avoided these traits, so hearing each in full bloom on The Messenger is rather thrilling; he’s no longer wandering, he’s found his way back home.”

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Traveling Wilburys was one of my secret guilty pleasures in ‘88. I listened almost exclusively to punk and new wave back then but grew up on a steady diet of 60′s-era rock (my parents are huge Bob Dylan fans and listened to a lot of Beatles as well) so the guitar-folk-pop blend of Vol. I was familiar and beautiful. The guitar and vocal harmonies are amazing. My favorite tracks include the hit “Handle With Care” which went to #45 on the US Hot 100 chart (#2 on the Album Rock Tracks chart) and to #21 in the UK, the Tom Petty-forward “Last Night,” the Beatles-esque “Heading for the Light” (not surprisingly written by George Harrison, along with Jeff Lynne), the Petty guitar twang of “Margarita” and “End of the Line,” which always made me sad as the video for the single was filmed just after Roy Orbison’s death in December ‘88 and shows an empty rocking chair holding a guitar during his vocals. Even though Dylan usually drives me a bit nuts, I really do like “Rattled” on which he’s heavily featured, though it was written by Lynne, Petty, Harrison and Orbison.

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The current global political upheavals inspired Marr to write Call the Comet. He told NME “This time around, I had to imagine a society, rather than just report what I see. Rather than feeling like it was too bleak as reportage or commentary about what I see outside, it’s kept the psycho-geography of the first two records but I had to reimagine it. I don’t want those fuckers contaminating my creativity.”

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Wild world music goes crazy, morphing garage rock punk guitar with virtuosic talent. In the video there is “a hypnotizing performance by one of the best upcoming dancers in the NY scene – Ryan Rockmore. Some of the singers are heavyweights of the same flamenco scene – Pedro Cortes, Ismael Fernandez and Jose Moreno. There is a guest appearance by Maalem Hassan Ben Jaafar, who leads the legendary New York-based Moroccan band, Innov Gnawa.“ (NPR) We didn’t get a dance performance or flamenco backup singers, but the performance was intense and mesmerizing anyway.

The rest of Universalists continues with explorations of various sounds from around the world, including indigenous chanting and marimbas (“Medicine”), old field recordings spliced and diced into modernity (“Cue the Machines” and “Projections”) and lap steel with metallophones (“Cockfight” which was recorded, in part, by Steve Albini). From Allmusic “Gat incorporates vocal samples and guest artists spanning several nations and cultures, all meshing to form an unnamed form of music in the name of universal harmony. It’s never an easy, smooth listen, however – it’s jarring and rambunctious, sometimes interrupted by glitches and tape edits. Opener “Cue the Machines” dices samples from an Alan Lomax-recorded Italian choir into a choppy wave of surf jazz that would make John Zorn jealous. “Cockfight” submerges gamelan percussion underneath furious thrashing and fluid guitar bending. Less frenetic and more sacred is “Medicine,” a joyous song of praise featuring Rhode Island-based powwow ensemble Eastern Medicine Singers. “Fading Casino” and “Sightseer” are also on the peaceful side, but the twilit melodies and echo-soaked vocals are still delivered with euphoric rushes of drums and a general feeling of enrapturement. The trio goes to emotional extremes during the most ambitious piece, “Chronology,” which begins as a dizzying splatter attack before a lonesome voice leads into a cloud of uncertainty, ending with harsh, stuttering edits taken from different live recordings of the group, forcing them to cooperate together. While challenging, the album seems to symbolize a struggle to achieve balance and harmony, and the results are frequently exciting.”

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