While the last few years have seen many music fans struggling to reconcile that they people behind their favorite music were terrible people (see especially: Brand New), Morrissey fans have always been painfully aware that he’s a bastard. To most Smiths fans, he’s like our old, drunk uncle who we wish would just shut up.

For the most part, that hasn’t stopped the fandom’s appreciation of his work. There’s been a sort of, “well, you know, he’s just old” attitude toward most of his press antics.

But Years of Refusal, his 2009 tour-de-force, doesn’t sound like the work of an old idiot clinging to his glory days. It’s a fierce and muscular disc that’s just as vigorous as anything he released twenty years earlier.

Most of my familiarity with his post-Smiths career comes from my cassette copy of  Bona Drag, a compilation of singles from the first two years of his solo career. I only purchased this record because it was on the clearance shelf at Hot Topic one day for like $5 (oh the clearance shelf of Hot Topic…so many great records that the mallcore kids are too naive to appreciate…).

I bought it completely cold with only his career with the Smiths and Bona Drag as my point of reference. So when “Something Is Squeezing My Skull” crashes in with a rabid punk energy, I was shocked. The record never quite regains that fury, but it’s far from the jangly chamber pop of songs like “The Last of the International Playboys.”

To be fair, Morrissey himself is unchanged. Even more than twenty years after his band broke up, his crooning voice is just as lilting and acrobatic as it’s ever been. His lyrics are just as wry and insulting as ever. If you strip away the bulky electric guitar riffs and Blue Öyster Cult-ready cowbell, “That’s How People Grow Up” would sound just like one of his classic hits.

But the record gets its toughness from two sources. The first is his new backing band, the Tormentors—a foursome of musicians that look to be at least fifteen years his junior. The second is the collaboration of producer Jerry Finn (his last record before his death) and keyboardist Roger Manning. The two had previously collaborated on a number of pop punk and garage records, including Blink-182, and that pedigree is obvious on this record. Guitar god Jeff Beck even shows up in “Black Cloud”

That isn’t to say that this is a punk record. This still Moz we’re talking about. And there are plenty of deceptively tender moments—tracks that whisper to get you in close, then stab you in the gut, which has always been Morrissey’s M.O. With its Flamenco flourishes, “When Last I Spoke To Carol” is the closest this gets to the Smith’s. The stunning “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore” begins as a weepy ballad, before exploding into an anthemic, venomous callout. “You Were Good In Your Time” sounds tender, but its irony is caustic—especially from someone many would consider past his own glory days.

Years of Refusal isn’t just some late-career Morrissey record. It’s a great record. Far from the clinging-to-life cringe fest I expected it to be when I first saw–and ignored—promos of it hanging up in record shops. It is a vital record from a man that many people expected to be past his prime. And while it might not make up for his being a general asshole, I’d rather listen to this than any interview he gives. At least this is worthwhile.