Morrissey Falls Back on That Moody Old Charisma

Morrissey is a special case, a morose satyr given to operatic outbursts of emotion. It’s a pose that somehow works as well today as it did during his days singing with the English band the Smiths more than a decade ago.

At the Hollywood Palladium on Wednesday, Morrissey revealed the pleasures and limitations of that eternally tortured, conflicted, confused, bitter, lovesick persona.

In the first of his two nights at the venue, Morrissey emerged like a seething rock ‘n’ roll Casanova, dressed in a faux leather outfit that could have come right out of Elvis’ closet.

His backing quartet wore matching coats and ties while crafting sometimes intense, driving rhythms for the singer’s half-serious, half-comical melodrama.

“You’ve got me aroused now,” Morrissey warned the crowd.

That kind of talk has its own kind of campy entertainment value, but too little of the singer’s material was up to his potential. In October, Morrissey made a surprisingly charged and epic appearance at the Coachella Festival in Indio, peaking with a thunderous reading of “Meat Is Murder.” But his longer set on Wednesday lost some of that smoldering intensity.

While the adoring fans never wavered in their enthusiasm, there was dramatic disparity between his best work and the lesser songs that filled the spaces in between. He sang too few of his own hits, and even fewer from the Smiths.

So the Morrissey faithful were left to depend on the momentum of his own arch charisma.

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* Morrissey plays Saturday at the Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut St., Ventura, 8 p.m. Sold out. (805) 639-3965.