FORGET SEX and drugs: the crucial impulse in the creation of rock ‘n’ roll is parricide. The ‘60s long-hairs killed off the mum-and-dad entertainers just as prog-rock’s lumbering diplidoci were destroyed by the meteor of punk rock. Meanwhile, Morrissey, the Caesar of ‘80s indie, found the knife in his back covered in the fingerprints of Britpop children. This was a particularly bloody coup: never mind the shaky accusations of racism, for Morrissey, the real misery – the real mystery – must have been the subsequent wave of indifference. All those years of being Mother Teresa for the clumsy and shy and suddenly he was being reviled for crimes he’d never committed and ignored by the people who should have loved him. No wonder that by the time of his last buttoned up, cast-down album, Maladjusted, he should have retreated into a defensive position, relying on his die-hard fanbase and the curious adulation in America and Mexico for a taste of glory.

Seven years have passed since then and in the worst-case scenario he might have become rock ‘n’ rolls own Miss Haversham, plugged into a hearing aid he really does need with a few withered flowers trailing from his back pocket. Yet it appears that the times are, once again, changing. Not only has he been asked to curate the South Bank’s Meltdown festival – a big gold star from the cultural establishment – it also seems there’s been a slow, sheepish realisation that one of our National Treasures has been treated shabbily. You Are The Quarry, his seventh studio album, has generated a genuine sense of anticipation as those who have denied him are beginning to realise that they’ve missed his voice, his charisma, his worldview. A youthful commitment to the Next Big Thing is all very well, but maybe you shouldn’t throw out the Queen Anne chairs just because you’ve got a new IKEA sofa.

What’s to stop him being a mere nostalgia act? While his fanbase will reactivate like KGB sleepers, it’s hard to imagine anyone much under 30 being over-excited – a hitch for a man who so fluently defined the language of adolescent yearning. Yet if his audience have grown up over seven years, so, vitally, has Morrissey. Yes, You Are The Quarry is packed with all the alienation, longing, physical revulsion and bitter spite you would expect, but it’s also sombre, sober, never smirky like the clever kid trying to trip up his teachers. The product of his Los Angeles exile, it also seems less parochial without losing any of his diary-trawling introspection, a spaciousness, a willingness to be direct, all tempered with his natural grace. Recorded on Attack – an old reggae imprint that’s become his new domain – it sees him reunited with his co-write, Alain Whyte, and long-time collaborator, Boz Boorer, and working with producer Jerry Finn, who, ironically, worked with such kid-friendly rock acts as Blink 182 and AFI. The result is a robust, rigorous record, its detail and texture proving it’s not just Attack that’s been rejuvenated.

In fact, for the first three songs it seems Morrissey has pulled off something genuinely audacious. The imposing, Statue Of Liberty-sized opener, America Is Not The World, is an FBI-baiting diatribe against his adopted homeland, a place where “the president is never black, female or gay”. Next comes the guitar-struck fury of Irish Blood, English Heart, a daringly stroppy pop song which he cracks like a whip. This, explicitly, is where he starts to set the record straight, addressing those who have reviled him for his refusal to explain himself – “I’ve been dreaming of a time when to be English is not to be baneful/To be standing by the flag not feeling shameful/Racist or partial”.

Meanwhile, I Have Forgiven Jesus – only Morrissey would have the nerve – is kin to his classic “monster” songs. “I was a nice kid with a nice paper round”, he sings, before berating Jesus “for all the desire/He placed in me when there’s nothing I can do with this desire.” It’s stately, heavenly with incense and electric piano, ornamented with catholic gilt until the archetypal diary-rifling that closes the song. “Monday – humiliation/Tuesday – suffocation/Wednesday – condescension/Thursday – is pathetic,” he sings, Craig David on bromide, testament to his enduring gift for phrasing.

After this presidential start, it can’t help but fade. Come Back To Camden is a stewed-tea bedsit ballad saved only by Morrissey’s voice, while Let Me Kiss You plays some old self-loathing tricks. The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores is a retrograde step, arch, spiteful, taking vengeance on policeman and taxmen. It does, however, show he still sees himself as the last stand against the vulgarians at the gate, rock’s own Boudicca holding back “Lockjaw pop stars/Thick as pig shit”. It’s in the magnificent curtain-call closer You Know I Couldn’t Last – “I” not “It” – a neat summary of his recent history (and a line taken from Candy Darling’s deathbed testimonial), the swooning vocal describing pursuit by “Accountants rampant”, “evil legal eagles” and “northern leeches” and the horrible dual-edged nature of success. It’s real matinee idol stuff, a single rose at his feet replacing the bunch of glads. “Every ist and every ism thrown my way to stay,” he sings, and you can sense his sadness, his art-form bitterness. “The teenagers who love you/They will wake up and kill you.” It’s the same story from Maladjusted’s Papa Jack, yet the surrounding directness dignifies his self-pity more than ever before.

Maybe for a generation raised on Kurt Cobain and The Distillers, he’ll have all the modern appeal of outside plumbing but those who have grown up with him will find much to love here: the soporific oestrogen-swell of odd ballad All The Lazy Dykes, the sexual insights of I’m Not Sorry, or the boxing-glove melody of The First Of The Gang To Die, a song about LA violence that he carries off by flaunting the fact that he’s an outsider amongst outsiders. “Such a silly boy,” he sighs, Joyce Grenfell in South Central.

After all this time, this album is still a charisma masterclass, a mature work from a teenage icon. The knives might have been out, but for Morrissey the Ides Of March are long gone. The king is not dead. Long live the king.

Review by Victoria Segal