Reviewed on Saturday January 23 (photo by Jamie Williams)
The Enmore Theatre audience tonight is dotted with people in Morrissey T-shirts, but as the musicians take the stage, they’re dressed in shirts emblazoned ‘Mexrrissey’. It’s the debut Australian performance by a seven-piece band that has nothing to do with Manchester or The Smiths’ famous frontman, except for the fact it only plays his songs. In Spanish. And with trumpet solos. And it’s downright brilliant.
Punters who came expecting mariachi suits and sombreros would have been mistaken, but Mexrrissey certainly have a more rock’n’roll attitude than their English namesake – especially in his solo years – and a much better sense of humour to boot. The language barrier is barely a problem, either. They open with ‘First Of The Gang To Die’, a song inspired at least in part by the Mexican drug cartels, and transport us into an alternate universe where Morrissey is the romantic songwriter behind an effervescent Latin rock band. The video backdrop sees Mexican graffiti scrawled over Morrissey album artwork, and desert tumbleweed rolling through the streets of Salford.
One wonders what the man himself would make of all this, but the crowd is on board almost immediately. Is singing along in a different language going to be a problem? Evidently not. ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’ (‘Cada Dia Es Domingo’) and Smiths hits like ‘Panic’ (‘Panico’) have enough wordless vocals for everyone to join in, and elsewhere, the sight of middle-aged British expats trying to mimic pigeon Spanish is mighty amusing.
Indeed, the magic of the Mexrrissey experience lies in the band’s sense of fun. Camilo Lara, the leader and spokesman, has the audience laughing after every song. He says they’d thought about starting a tribute band for Faker, but ‘Mex-Fake’ didn’t have the same ring to it (and nor did ‘Olivia Newton-Mex’). Later, he confesses that translating Morrissey’s songs into Spanish wasn’t really such a challenge: “They have a lot of drama … like telenovelas from Mexico.”
An early highlight, ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’, seems somehow more sincere in the Spanish tongue and with a cowbell carrying the pulse, while ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ is a bona fide banger. Vocals are split between four of the members, while the rest handle horns, percussion, drums and keys.
Their set closes with ‘How Soon Is Now’, as well it must, but the most special moment of the show is still to come. Mexrrissey take their bows and pose for photos; the lights go up, the house music plays and the doors are opened for people to exit. But nobody does. After nearly ten minutes of cheering, the amigos return. They’re out of songs, so they repeat their version of ‘The Last Of The Famous International Playboys’. A spontaneous and very genuine encore? Even Morrissey would have a hard time beating that.
