I have the same problem with Southpaw that I do with Ringleader. Both could have been career highs when you take the concept of each. Musically though, they fall frustratingly short. Southpaw is more guilty of this; due to the prog-rock nature of some of the songs which just strike me as self-indulgent rather than of any artistic merit.
I love them both musically and think they
are career highs - but even I will totally acknowledge that I've chewed on both a lot more than I've actually listened to them. Ringleader requires the right mood to hit me as it should, and Southpaw, yes, the Prog...
I dunno. I feel like there was actual intention there; the lyrics and delivery are so full of paranoia and enclosing violence that I suspect the Prog exists to add to that atmosphere - to create some sense of massive, icky space in which the voice itself is somewhat lost...? Sort've a "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" writ large. But I think the realization of that idea doesn't quite work out, or else is done in a way that has great meaning for Morrissey, but little for me; to me, it's too enthusiastically, robustly rocking to connect. The exception is "Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils" which manages a really interseting and complex atmosphere that merges with the song.
As for the overall purpose of this album, at this time - I agree that Jake probably has a lot to do with it; shame we don't know enough about Jake to properly guess at how that works. I've always faintly suspected that a few of the songs' narrators are meant to be Jake speaking to Morrissey, but as we don't know what their friendship was really like, I have no idea whether I'm talking about "Do Your Best & Don't Worry" or "The Operation." Come to think of it, I've never worked out what "The Operation" might actually mean, though it's awfully fun to try.
I think it can have "Best Friend on the Payroll" on it and still be reasonably affectionate (while acknowledging pain). That said, Morrissey has a habit of expressing very gory emotions in light songs, as if these things sometimes can't be scraped otherwise...
Even more than an album about the end of a close relationship (of whatever type) it's always struck me as a work about real, deadly depression and self-loathing, of which feelings re: the end of the relationship is only a part - which is not to say it doesn't have wit and perspective, but that's still what I tend to get out of its eight declarative, merciless, somewhat stony-faced tracks.
Ultimately I've always found
Southpaw somewhat incomprehensable. I read the details in a relatively consistent manner, but tend to insert different things into its heart according to my mood. Someday we'll probably know enough biographical information on Morrissey to get a sense of the specifics behind it - in the meantime he explains so little (it's almost the flip of
Vauxhall, in which he "just can't explain, so he won't even try to"), even of his emotions, that I've never quite been able to read it freely.
(The lack of described emotion, save again on "The Teachers...," makes me suspect that the album has a lot to do with the difficulties of traditional masculinity, or at least the narrow range of expression one is allowed if one wants to be thought "properly masculine." See "The Boy Racer," which really seethes with a weird mix of loathing and competititon and desire, but tries to distill all of these emotions into a simple "I'm jealous, that's all").
Is it weird that, despite its completely confunding me half the time, and despite the fact that I really think the Prog's a failed experiment, I really regard
Southpaw as one of his two or three best? I'm just inclined to trust it, for some reason. With some pieces -including Morrissey pieces- out there, I feel that they don't always make sense simply because they're not thought out and considered - with
Southpaw, conversely, I tend to assume there's something to find, that there's a reason behind each decision, even the drum solo.