Cathartic, compelling and confessional, ‘’ finds confronting the chaos of modern life without allowing it to overwhelm him. “The title came to me early in the process and became an inescapable idea,” he says of an album preoccupied with the noise, uncertainty and sheer overload of the world around us.

Yet for all its darker themes, this is an album that feels remarkably alive. Technology, political frustration, the ephemeral nature of modern day relationships run through it, but the music responds with energy, optimism and a sense of movement. More than 40 years into his career, Johnny Marr is still galvanized by what music can do, drawing on the sounds that have shaped him while continuing to make them feel immediate and entirely his own.

‘Spin’ is a sharp, bass-heavy rush that transforms the noise and overwhelm of the technological age into something urgent, kinetic and strangely buoyant. Its chiming guitars recall the ’80s, but the song feels firmly rooted in the present, turning that sense of information overload into one of the album’s most immediate moments. Rather than dwelling on the chaos, Johnny Marr finds energy in it and uses it to propel himself forward. As he sings, “Days keep running through my head”, there’s a sense of thoughts endlessly circling, but rather than becoming weighed down by them, the song turns that feeling into something exhilarating.

There are echoes of the emotional tension that ran through The Smiths, but ‘The Age Of Everything’ approaches those themes from a more hopeful perspective. ‘Ophelia’ brings together shimmering guitars, understated percussion and some of Marr’s most assured vocals on the album, creating an expansive sound that lingers.

There’s a familiar Smiths-era feel to ‘It’s Time’, particularly in the chiming guitar and driving bass, which lock together to give the song its pulse. Yet there’s a distinctly contemporary urgency to it also, keeping the track from feeling like an exercise in nostalgia. Marr’s unwillingness to accept the status quo are evident in the lyrics, “I’ll ascend on to somewhere / Trying to claim victory”. The album takes a more vulnerable turn on ‘In And Out Of Love’, where shifting tempos and atmospheric guitars give a relationship in turmoil an edgy feel. The song finds beauty in the aftermath of a breakup, turning a real-life story into something affecting, namechecking Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ along the way.

Marr refuses to let the sadness have the final word. ‘Catch a ride onto the wave’ offers a simple, hopeful resolution, the sense that life goes on and you have to see where it takes you. ‘Beyond The Rain’ turns that restless energy into something more uplifting, building from tense, dissonant guitars into a huge, resonant chorus. There’s a sense of release as the song opens out, with its darker edges giving way to something brighter and more evocative.

For Johnny Marr, this really could be the age of everything. Four decades on, he remains a class act, still curious, still innovative and still relentlessly cool. If ‘The Age Of Everything’ is about embracing possibility, Johnny Marr embodies the very best of everything music has to offer.

8/10