America may have been charmed by Boy George, but it's more difficult to imagine it embracing the Smiths and their poetic singer/writer Morrissey, the U.K.'s latest Top of the Pop rave. The Smiths hail from Manchester, the northern industrial town which spawned the likes of the Buzzcocks and Joy Division, and in their sound they've assimilated each of those bands, plus a lot of Velvet Underground, Modern Lovers and Only Ones. The Smiths' first three singles -- "This Charming Man," "Hand In Glove" and "What Difference Does It Make?" -- have all landed in the upper regions of the U.K. charts, while their debut LP, on the independent Rough Trade label, broke in at #2 its first week out.

All this from a chap in his twenties who writes above "love on the smooth leather of the passenger seat" [sic] and "what a mess he's made of his life," even as the English tabloids accuse him of polymorphously perverse pedophilia and Wilde assertions (e.g. "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle," "Pretty Girls Make Graves" and "Suffer Little Children"). Morrissey's nasal plaint slinks in and out of guitarist (and founding member) Johnny Marr's swirling acoustic garage sound, fitting together like, well, a "Hand In Glove". The Smiths' vision of Life without Love as an Illness unto Death recalls the unflinching bleakness of Joy Division, while their sharp observations and wry humor rival the rat-a-tat wordplay of the Buzzcocks.

"Fifteen minutes with you/Well, I wouldn't say no," sings Morrissey in "Reel Around The Fountain," and that was about how long I had on the phone with the Smiths' frontman during the band's just-completed jaunt around England, which was, by all accounts, pretty hectic. "The tour's a complete sell-out," he says matter-of-factly. "It's really been quite wonderful. The reactions in most places have been rather hysterical. It's immensely pleasing." Indeed, despite Morrissey's own self-confessed ambition to create "Art," he's not at all averse to peddling a little commerce, a factor which distinguishes the Smiths from most of their fellow acts on Rough Trade, a label better known for the offbeat and political.

"I don't really feel part of a Rough Trade group," insists the singer, who took his name from the director of Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, Heat, Trash, and Flesh (a photograph of Joe Dallesandro's chest from the latter adorns the cover of the Smiths' album). [Of course, we know this is untrue - Morrissey is his real last name. Isn't it odd how so many journalists thought that Morrissey stole his name from Paul? - despair] "I think the Smiths would be what they are regardless of their record company. I don't feel Rough Trade's policies have been ingrained in our music or anything I write. It just so happens, on most points, we agree completely.

"I find most previous Rough Trade groups nonsensical and unimportant," Morrissey goes on. "I am quite pleased that we have become successful with Rough Trade, though, rather than any major record company -- it seems to increase the value of snubbing the industry. By not doing videos, by not paying for album promotion, by not taking advertising space... all that's rather unique."

Certainly Rough Trade's comparatively small size hasn't harmed the Smiths' ability to sell records in England, but America's quite another story. As Morrissey admits, the band will need promotion just to get the record heard on the radio; and one wonders how long the Smiths can survive without that all-important MTV airplay.

"I'd like to be successful everywhere," answers the ever-forthright pop star. "But it always has to be on our terms. Otherwise, it would have no value to us. That's where we get our reputation for being stubborn and problematic, but it's really quite untrue... Where America's concerned, I don't wish to go door-to-door. I refuse to take the long route that seems to have desroyed so many others. I want it the easy way. I won't go to America unless we're really wanted there. If the record can be listened to over there, then that should be enough. It should provide a good foundation, a beginning. But endless touring is time-consuming, soul-destroying and it wrecks your health. I think the U.S. market is much more flexible and open than is generally considered. I do believe it's there for the taking. Most things people tell me about breaking in America have proven to be completely wrong. It either happens or it doesn't. I think it's largely fate."

Tell that to Paul Weller or REO Speedwagon, Mr. Smith. Still, regardless of his sometimes insufferable pretensions (this is the guy known for throwing freshly cut gladiolus into the audience at performances), Morrissey's neo-flower power is downright refreshing compared to the glut of still-born flash-synth futurists like Duran headband. The Smiths are a British guitar band for people who crave Americana like '65 Dylan, the Byrds and Television. Any guy who sounds like a cross between Lou Reed and Jonathan Richaman in their prime, of course, is gonna be all right by me. Especially with lines like, "I dreamt about you last night/And fell out of bed twice," or "I know the wind-swept mystical air/It means I'd like to seize your underwear" or "I would go out tonight/But I haven't got a stitch to wear". You can just tell Morrissey's background was in literature rather than rock, his influences more Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, and Shelagh Delaney than the Velvets or the Modern Lovers.

"I'd listen to the Velvet Underground quite often, but never seriously," he says now. "I couldn't cite them as an influence, but so much of their stuff really pleases me. Books were always more important to me than music. But I always believed the two could be combined quite successfully in a way that hadn't been done before. I felt lyricists in popular music were just a bit too traditional; it was like a profession, with a collection of words that had to be used. You know, the moon-June-spoon school of songwriting. It's become important to me to write words off the accepted track."

Asked to name contemporaries who've achieved similar results, Morrissey is typically succinct: "I can't think of one person, really. I wish that I could."

The Smiths' no-frills romanticism is a welcome reaction to the Anglo-fascination with fashion which so often overshadows the music. On the other hand, Morrissey's frequent claims that he's actually doing something "new" are a bit more suspect, reminiscent of Gary Hart's "new" politics -- the same old jive with a new haircut. Similarly, the Smiths' stand against rock videos, their insistence on autonomy, their old-fashioned notion about a spiritual pop community bonded together by shared ideas, their aversion to hype and their vision of an America "there for the taking," suggest a bunch of nouveau hippies whose non-image will leave them lost in the land of Entertainment Tonight.

"I believe the record should sell itself," insists Morrissey. "And if one does really need a string of videos and endless promotions, I believe it only reflects one's disbelief in the work and himself. I'd just as soon stand next to my album, and if it works that way, it works."

Morrissey's fatalism might just be the preparation he needs for his shot at American stardom. "I'm just a country-mile behind the whole world," he sings with a manic, high-pitched falsetto in "Miserable Lie," but you know this rube is only lulling us into a false sense of confidence. The Smiths are an intellectual Britrock band which might just sneak in the populist back door and achieve stateside success when no one's watching.