Morrissey, here for sold-out Tower gig, stayed at same hotel as Trump

Morrissey offered the sold-out crowd at Upper Darby's Tower Theater equal doses of fatalistic hubris, wounded romanticism, and bruising, fanciful prose on Thursday, set to a mix of swinging, fuzzy guitars, thudding drums (and gongs!), and swishing, epic pop tones.

He looked and sounded healthy and hale, and his gripes - kvetching is a requirement at a Morrissey gig - were plentiful and robust: his worthy anti-animal-flesh rant (a noisily neo-industrial "Meat is Murder"), the "shame of Spain" (a strummy "The Bullfighter Dies"), and his "lovely hotel" stay in Philadelphia the previous night with an odd next-door neighbor, here on a campaign stop, "Donald Trump, the closest I've ever been to an open grave."

Same old Morrissey. Good on that.

Per all live Moz programs, there were seething fans in stretched-out Smiths T-shirts. There was his American band of slicked-back greasers. There was himself, trilling and crooning in a clear, powerful voice, sounding most youthful through the surging guitars of "Alma Matters," the clang of "Suedehead," and his full-chested finale, "Irish Blood, English Heart," with its cocksure refrain, "There is no one on earth I'm afraid of."

Morrissey & Co. prefaced several of his signature hits with oddball intros to throw the audience: a swooning "Everyday Is Like Sunday" got an "Aladdin Sane"-ish piano lead-in; the surprisingly metal-thundering "How Soon Is Now?" took the theme from All in the Family ("Those Were the Days") as its prelude.

Though a short lull ensued with the same-sounding slither of new songs "Kiss Me a Lot" and "Istanbul," Morrissey and his ferocious unit were marvelously noisy as they crushed their way through the tribal-thumping "Ganglord," the chamber pop-chiming "Ouija Board, Ouija Board" and a rakish "You Have Killed Me."