(An old friend of mine, Jason Brown, posted the following on Facebook ..... Missy M and DearSaul will probably have a few comments ......)

I believe, but cannot prove...

I make a lot of fuss about dabbling in the domain of the subjective, the unprovable, the world of personal experience and revelation. Mostly I rant about how religion makes claims which are utterly unprovable (and by extension tricky to disprove).

Well, I'm about to make a statement which I cannot prove, and which may make a few of my friends froth at the mouth, and which I can personally attest may seem completely insane to any right-thinking Indie-Kid of my generation. And it is thus:

Johnny Marr joining Modest Mouse has, for me, blown everything The Smiths ever achieved into a cocked hat.

I may need to qualify this, as it is necessarily a potentially ambiguous, subjective statement.

Morrissey + Marr + (Rourke + Joyce) = Sublime Genius in guitar pop
Brock + Marr + (Modest Mouse) = Roaring, utter rending of what's gone before. Better than the Smiths

I heard 'Dashboard' on the radio yesterday, and pulled out the last two MM albums for a relisten. It's true. Modest Mouse were unbelievably good before Marr rocked up, but afterwards there is a change, and the whole united overcomes what Johnny previously achieved with The Smiths (and we won't even mention The The and Electronic).

I've seen them live twice now, once shortly after "We Were Dead" came out, and you could see they hadn't quite gelled, and once more recently - and there you could see the difference. They're all-conquering, and I've only just really noticed. You may call it epiphany, if you will.

Most people would say that "Good News" is better than "We Were Dead". And in some ways it is. It's a little more quirky. It sprawls. I has "Bukowski" on it. But there's something in "We Were Dead" that I can't quite put my finger on, and I suspect that thing is Marr.

Direct comparison to the output of The Smiths, though, is a thoroughly difficult proposition. There's a generation's difference between one and the next. I loved, adored The Smiths when I was a teenager, more than half my life ago. I was a different person though.

That said, I'm willing, in the spirit of irrational belief, to make the leap and say: Yes. Modest Mouse with Marr, even after just one album, are better than The Smiths. The first two songs on "We Were Dead", alone, take "The Queen Is Dead" and "Meat is Murder" and bury them in the desert.

Modest Mouse are greater than the Smiths. Not in terms of potential, of what they may achieve in the next couple of albums. Actually greater.

But I can't prove it.