or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

The Smiths was released in 1984 to general disappointment. Lazy production and haphazard structure consigned an album expected to be a definitive work to a level lower: a band capable of a masterpiece, in time. This, the follow up was the fulfilment of that promise, bursting with vigour and variety. It announced The Smiths on the music scene as a talent capable of a masterpiece- a talent that would endure to make them the greatest British guitar band of its time.

“The Headmaster Ritual” announced the New Smiths’ arrival with intent. A vitriolic swipe at institutionalised cruelty in Manchester schools, labelling their heads “spineless bastards” may well have seemed like a safe move geared at their stereotyped fan-base of bedroom dwelling tortured teen souls but the conviction of Morrissey’s words and delivery makes it applicable to anyone resentful of a figure of authority, be it boss, politician or otherwise. Johnny Marr’s intricate guitar work is not constrained by clumsy production as it was on the debut and this opening track is a guitar master-class.

There was no great thematic departure at any point in the career of the band and Meat is Murder is no different. Morrissey is still by far his most affecting when he is recoiling. “When you laugh about people, who feel so very lonely their only desire is to die, well I’m, afraid, it doesn’t make me smile” he laments on “That Joke isn’t Funny Anymore”. Charting the complexity of emotions felt at the end of a relationship and how the world seems a different and less accommodating place without someone you love than when with them, the enigmatic lyrics allow the listener to make it as revelatory as they choose. “On cold leather seats, it suddenly struck me, I just might die with a smile on my face after all” a reference to being in the midst of a maniacal and ultimately suicidal drive? Or perhaps something more elicit? Morrissey famously described how erotic he finds leather upholstery in a NME interview, a strange inclination at any time but particularly for such a passionate vegetarian and champion of Animal Rights, but that’s Steven Morrissey for you.

It is this motivation that fuels the album’s call to arms - the title track. It caused fans to convert to vegetarianism in their droves and others deny it as overly melodramatic- either way there is no denying its fervour and commitment to the cause by Morrissey, condemning meat eaters as murderers. The Queen is subject to equal abuse on “Nowhere Fast”, despite the comical nature of the line “I’d like to drop my trousers to the Queen” it develops into a stinging assault on the monarch “the poor and the needy, are selfish and greedy on her terms” is the diagnosis, an indication of the direction they would take on the follow up album.

Inspiration comes from a wide range of sources. “Rusholme Ruffians” evokes Victoria Wood’s “Fourteen Again” and Pomus & Shuman's "Marie's the Name (Of His Latest Flame)", a song it would segue into on when played live. The northern comic’s verbose style is imposed onto a song made famous by Elvis Presley to superb effect. Andy Rourke’s wandering bass-line helps dispel the myth that the Smiths were Morrissey, Marr and “two others”, though admittedly it is Morrissey’s jaded line “Someone falls in love, and someone’s beaten up, and the senses being dulled are mine” that proves its most enduring memory.

The lyricist’s fascination with Elizabeth Smart’s sublime novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept that fuelled “Reel Around The Fountain” is even more evident in the bouncing “What She Said”. Lines like “I smoke because I’m hoping for an early death” and “How come someone hasn’t noticed that I’m dead” are reconstructions from the book that are made for the purpose of describing in-depth the plight of a depressed and self-involved woman. The song also seems to owe a debt to the Beatles song “She Said, She Said” from Revolver that stretches further than the title.

Sexual ambiguity rears its head on “I Want The One I Can’t Have” hitting out at a closet dweller in denial “On the day that your mentality, catches up with your biology, come around” may not be his most implicit reference but its subtlety is typical of the complexity that runs through this record. It is only on the blunt and overlong “Barbarism Begins At Home” that the LP suffers a dip in quality.

Whether it is staring out of your bedroom window to the sound of “That Joke...” or bouncing down the street to “What She Said” The Smiths craft music that makes you feel totally safe but frighteningly vulnerable at the same time. They deserved to transcend the patronising categorisation they suffered at every juncture of their career, and no record documents their diversity better than this.