Morrissey

After a seven-year hiatus from recording, former Smiths singer Morrissey returned a little bit grayer and a little chubbier but otherwise more or less the same for his seventh solo record in 2004, You Are the Quarry, the disc that returned him to critical favor. He diligently followed that comeback album with a pair of respectable follow-ups, the most recent of which, this year’s Years of Refusal, does little to reinvent the wheel but has the distinction of being easily his hardest-rocking record in a decade. With his trademark morose, self-deprecating humor, the Moz waxes theatrically about intertwined themes of parenthood and codependence, and returns to the chiming romanticism of The Smiths for “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris,” one of his finest singles.