Send "The Smiths " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Rollingstone |
 Overseen by Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr, this compilation emphasizes the compositional might behind the miserablism of England's most idiosyncratic and influential Eighties band. Sound traces the quartet's four-year evolution from savage tenderness to refined despair: Morrissey articulates both bleak romanticism and omni-deprecating humor, while Marr accompanies him with chiming, multilayered riffs. The Smiths often relegated their most emotionally detailed and musically divergent tracks to single flips, included here: Their most famous song, "How Soon Is Now?" began as a B side, while non-album cuts like the languid "Stretch Out and Wait" showcase the bittersweet contrast between Morrissey's sympathetic crooning and the droll realism of lines like "Let your puny body lie down." Rarely does an act so flatteringly curate its own brilliance....full text |
| Allmusic |
| Depending on your count, The Sound of the Smiths is the third or fourth posthumous Smiths compilation -- a number that may be a bit excessive considering the group's rather concise catalog, containing just four studio albums and singles rounded up on three singles compilations (and two of those covered the same essential territory, too). That's a lot of repetition but whether it's taken in either its single-disc or double-disc deluxe editions, The Sound of the Smiths is the best of these posthumous overviews. The single-disc -- which is the first disc of the deluxe set -- is the hits disc, containing every cut from the 18-track 1995 compilation Singles and expanding it with five cuts all dating from the mid-'80s: "Still Ill," "Nowhere Fast," "Barbarism Begins at Home," "The Headmaster Ritual," and "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby." As a Smiths-basics goes, it's first-rate, an introduction and summary that's compulsively listenable. The second disc on the deluxe The Sound of the Smiths splits the difference between a rarities compilation and a "more of the best" collection of album tracks, rounding up non-LP singles and B-sides like "Jeane," "Wonderful Woman," "Money Changes Everything," and the New York Vocal version of "This Charming Man," live versions of "Handsome Devil," "Meat Is Murder," "What's the World?" and "London," the Troy Tate demo of "Pretty Girls Make Graves," and a bunch of great Smiths songs including a hefty chunk of The Queen Is Dead. It falls short of being the long-awaited collection of Smiths rarities, the absence of which remains a mystery, but it's the best stab at one to date and a pretty entertaining listen in its own right....full text |
| Prefixmag |
| A myriad of best-of compilations for an even larger myriad of long-dead bands is not exactly a new strain of marketing in the rock world. As such, the arrival of The Sound of the Smiths -- the fourth posthumous release from a band with only four studio albums under its prestigious name -- comes as a little less than a surprise. What is a surprise, however, is just how much The Sound, unlike the massively prismatic array of countless comps squeezing the last bit of juice from their respective groups (say hello, Doors, the Who, Stones), gets it right. From the impeccable song selection to the excellent sequencing, this best-of (overseen by Morrissey and Johnny Marr) manages to distill, reflect and embody the lovely and witty melancholic sway of the band’s hyperliterate post-punk nearly as much as monolithically powerful The Queen Is Dead (1986)....full text |
The Smiths lyrics
