Laudable sentiment, but clumsily Stateside and simpleton in its Coke-And-A-Smile political posturing. Corporate Athena simplicity for anti-corporates.

In the CD shops you will find any number of the classic albums by 80s indie Godheads: The Smiths, and flora-and-fauna flaunting Morrissey is possibly the most English of antitheses of the poster.

Flinging flowers as the enchantingly camp frontman of his old group, they were daffodils disguising the left-handed hooks of a heavyweight grudge-carrying angsty and angry young man.

That he could express his anger or make his point by bending and twisting the English language so ambitiously and viciously to suit his end, like he was Alan-Bennett-with-a-stanley-knife (or Victoria-Wood-with-a-chainsaw), increased the excitement in a way that his peers could do nought but marvel at.

Following the demise of The Smiths, Morrissey released 25 hit singles, several albums of varying quality and was memorably described by a High Court Judge as "devious, truculent and unreliable" following a very public session of litigious handbags with ex-bandmates...

And now, seven years after the vaguely disappointing "Maladjusted", he finally returns to the fray refreshed and ready.

He arrives tooled up with terrific turns of phrase, and armed-to-the-teeth with tunes so sharp you could cut your mind in two when listening.

You Are The Quarry, produced by Jerry Finn (Blink 182, Green Day) has a crystal clear production sheen that never swamps but forces the songs to stand virtually unadorned, and entirely on their own merits. They do, they do...

The First Of The Gang To Die, which is to be the second single from this album, pretty much wipes the floor with every one of his other singles since solo-debut Suedehead, if it's sheer adult-pop exuberance you're after.

Another of his obsessional looks at the romance of crime, it's something of a cautionary tale of "Hector" who "stole from the rich and the poor and the not very rich and the very poor". Just about everybody, then.

If it's balladeering ya wants, Come Back To Camden can be read straight - a lament for a lost love. As operatic and grandiosely camp as a row of high-class tents, this piano led gem is imprisoned Oscar Wilde doing Elton John.

Morrissey croons "There was something I wanted to tell you, so funny you'd have killed yourself laughing. But I look around and remember I am alone".

Sentimental in melody and most always striking for its simplicity of wordplay, the opening few seconds are amongst the most affecting he's ever achieved. And what a line: "Drinking tea with the taste of the Thames..."

I Like You and The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores (a fantastically perfect Morrissey title) are two of the songs he premiered on a whistle-stop UK tour eighteen months ago, so have rings of familiarity over-and-above their immediately infectious melodies.

I Like You contains the laugh-out-loud refrain "You're not right in the head" over-and-over, while "The World..." takes hefty heavy sideswipes at ineffectual and bland "lock-jaw popstars, thicker then pig-sh*t". Will Young's not on the Christmas card list, then?

First single Irish Blood English Heart was another given an outing in 2002, but it failed to make much positive impression back then.

Here, however, it has been buffed-up and beefed-up. It's an incredibly vitriolic and violent song: controlled and intensely tight staccato guitar pattern and whip-crack rimshot verses against a blazing and defiantly wild monster guitar riff chorus...

It's rousing stuff, all right, and is an imposingly strong statement to make in this Age Of Crashing Bores. "I'm dreaming of a time when to be English... ... is to stand by the flag and not seem racist or partial"...

A not-so-barbed riposte to the NME, who alleged he was racist after his championing of the Union Jack, and then stuck the boot in at every opportunity.

This all happened, of course, more-or-less when Britpop was "going supernova"... But he's not finished there: "I'm dreaming of a time when the English will spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell and denounce this royal line which ! still salutes him"... The Queen Is Not Dead, and so Our Man In The Trenches is still gunning...

Morrissey puts his boot in on several well-chosen and probably well-deserving targets. America gets it in the neck at regular intervals, most notably on lushly deceptive opener "America Is Not The World".

It could be a reaction to the post-9/11 bully-muscle America seems intent on flexing at every opportunity: "America, your head's too big"...

Or it could be a series of narrower observations as wider metaphor, made whilst living out in L.A. on the baseness of US culture, and consequent world-wide influence and invasiveness of it: "America, you gave us the hamburger / Well you know where you can shove your hamburger"...

It seems grossly anachronistic for such a quintessentially English figurehead as Morrissey to find peace amongst the pleasure of the palms, but it seems that, more-or-less, he has found some sort of happiness.

"There is a place in the sun for anyone who has the will to chase one / And I think I've found mine" he sings on Let Me Kiss You...

Not that this CD is some sort of diary of the dreaded descent into contentedness... Far from it...

Take his Depressed-Craig-David moment on the oh-so-lapsed-Catholic I Have Forgiven Jesus: "Monday, humiliation / Tuesday, suffocation / Wednesday, condescension / Thursday - is pathetic..."

The reading of this line is a key to Morrissey's entire career. Excruciatingly self-consciously self-pitying, it's impossible for anyone with half-an-ounce of sense to take it at face value.

His facility for the use of language is absolutely breathtaking in scope and general hilarity, and he's so camply Northern in his phrasings that he shares much of great worth in common with comedian Peter Kay and the aforementioned Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood.

How have people so often missed this vastly deep vein of humour? Morrissey has usually always had his tongue THIS far in his cheek but, perhaps, his finger rammed too far into too many folks' eyes...

"I've had my face dragged through fifteen miles of sh*t" he angrily sings during How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel, another attack on the NME, or the enemy, and you can hear the spite and bile dripping down through the microphone.

All Manic Street Preachers minor-chords, musically this is as contemporarily mainstream as he might get. But any claims that he may have lost his fire-in-the-belly or his relevance are... well, irrelevant...

So.... It's a terrifically punchy, contemporary and accessible album laden with many fine moments, and it could - should - see him embraced by a wider crowd.

It's certainly amongst his more solid collections of consistently good songs, so this non-compromised very Morrissey-esque CD is worth more than a cursory or half-interested listen. It's a rewarding listen.

Reviewed by BBC Humber Contributor, Steven Askew.