Well what took ya so long?  With songs as strong as we’ve heard from his first solo album, The Messenger, we can’t help but wonder why former Smiths’ songwriter and guiding-guitarist Johnny Marr has taken decades to put out his own album.  Following The Smiths’ demise, however, Marr became a songwriting, guitar-playing gunslinger of sorts, working with Kristy MacColl, Billy Bragg, Oasis, The Pretenders, The The, Electronic (with some of the New Order orderlies), Modest Mouse (Marr’s guitar playing and sound at the band’s 2007 Santa Barbara Bowl show are still deeply embedded in our minds), and countless other projects.  All of which served, in our ever-so-humble opinion, to mar Johnny’s personal endeavors.  Marr did pull together a couple of bands (The Healers and The Cribs), but is only now getting ’round to recording and releasing a personalized record.  If the new albums’ first two songs (the title track and now Upstarts) are any indication, The Messenger could very well end up on our Best Albums of 2013 list.  Time will tell.  Check it out below.