Belligerent Ghoul sends the link and excerpt:

Tales of woe and vodka - The Guardian

Excerpt:

In New York, the sold-out Bowery Ballroom is as buzzing as their UK gig venues, with fans singing along to lines such as "I am young and I am lost" - the sort of irresistible clarion calls pop audiences used to get from Morrissey. In fact, the scenes are comparable to Smiths gigs in the 1980s (although Morrissey could never have written The Night I Lost My Head, a tale of indiscretions fuelled by booze)... ...While Smith is not a Mozzer acolyte (he is as enthusiastic about Smokey Robinson and John Cage), there are similarities between the two. Morrissey was famously celibate. Smith - wary of the traps posed by the Billingham lifestyle - was abstinent for years, before suddenly plunging into alcohol. "I always thought it was a one-dimensional lifestyle, but I conformed to the one-dimensional lifestyle and found it to be three-dimensional now and then," he says with a twinkle. Through vodka, he "became a different person" and entered the territory of his best songs and biggest catastrophes. The Night I Lost My Head recounts a night when "things were going well and I ... er ... my actions were indiscreet." He squirms as I pursue the issue. "Somewhere along the line, something I said, or the way I moved my drunken lips, ended in disaster..."