As befits a man who never saw a declarative he couldn’t invert, the album cover inserts a comma between his name and the title. And yet, on this, his first record in seven years, he came loaded for bear, slagging America and Britain on the first two tracks. Further on, there’s a reference to “lockjaw pop stars/thicker than pig shit”: tough talk from a man whose own beautiful mug has the give of candy glass. Yes, this is Morrissey come back with Big Statements, nearly always the kiss of death unless blown by rappers or hardcore punks. A record conceptually wound around his adopted Los Angeles would have been, in theory at least, a phenomenal approach. But barring “The First of the Gang to Die” and (ugh) “All the Lazy Dykes,” You Are the Quarry strode onto the stage as if its creator’s hiatus had never been.

But vintage Morrissey will always have its own charm, and here it’s updated in places with a foregrounded affection. “I Like You” has the requisite reference to “fat faces,” but it’s still a fine us-against-the-world tune with Orbisonian warbling, baggy sequencing and a fun-dumb chorus. Written for Nancy Sinatra (Morrissey chipped in backing vocals for her version), “Let Me Kiss You” is about as lustful as the man gets. “Close your eyes/ And think of someone you physically admire,” he awkwardly beseeches, bolstered by Roger Manning’s muscular piano. “Come Back to Camden” positively tingles with its images of knees, grazing then spread. And for all its unearned familiarity, “All the Lazy Dykes” is a hypnotic slice of slo-mo, with Morrissey both finding solidarity and inviting the listener to join him.

It could get lost in the opening geopolitical combo, but You Are the Quarry is Morrissey at his most ecumenical. There had always been an inferred audience of misfits and sad sacks. Now, perhaps due to his global jaunts or just hiatus jitters, he pitched the big tent before everyone’s eyes. Sometimes it was painful (take your pick from the opener: “you know where you can shove your hamburger” or “the President is never black, female or gay/ and until that day/ you’ve got nothing to say to me”), sometimes it was stirring (as in “All the Lazy…”). On “Irish Blood, English Heart” — a number three single in its first week — he gets boringly, maddeningly centrist, shading Tories and Labour alike. But he also gets across his disgust for a flag that represents racism: an olive branch years in the delivery. And on the closer, he unites everyone around the safest target: critics. “You Know I Couldn’t Last” feints with a rock intro, but settles into a self-pitying ballad of the first order. Fluttering over the plight of new fickle fans and print mags alike, he punches into the savage refrain, then the outro. “Your royalties bring you luxuries,” he sings, switching to falsetto for a fourfold “but oh — the squalor of the mind”: a Radiohead record condensed into couplet form.

Morrissey’s return was garlanded by chart successes: he reached the Top Ten with four consecutive singles for the first time since his solo debut; never before had all four singles come from the same record. It was, if Wikipedia can be believed, his only platinum record as a solo artist. The occasional pyrotechnics were gone — “Irish Blood” was even a repurposed track from Alain Whyte’s side project, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams — but Moz’s pipes were in fine fettle, and the record leaned both inward and outward in the expected measure. While not a regal emergence from the wilderness, You Are the Quarry proved that its maker’s viability extended past live singalongs of two-decades-old Smiths tunes.