The Smiths reached their zenith with the 1986 album The Queen is Dead. Morrissey’s morose yet sometimes sardonically humorous lyrics were harnessed throughout to tightly focused playing and dynamic production. The new three-CD one-DVD set includes a sonically vibrant remastering of the album (it didn’t sound this good in ’86) plus the requisite demos and alternate takes, a concert recorded in Boston at the time of the LP’s release and what amounts to an extended music video by director Derek Jarman. There was humor in “Frankly, Mr. Shankly” whose protagonist had “the 21st century breathing down my neck” in his race to rise above the herd. Morrissey was at his darkest (brooding jealousy while “climbing into an empty bed”) in “I Know It’s Over.” The album’s greatest moments came amidst the melodramatic grandeur of its penultimate track, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out.”
