We’ve had the odd single from them over the last few years, but THE THE are now officially back, with their first studio album in a quarter of a century, which consists of twelve new songs from stalwart Matt Johnson.
Johnson says about the title (it is derived from the word “ensoul”, which means ‘to endow with a soul’), “The moment the soul enters the human body,” Johnson says. “I think it’s a pertinent title in this age of nascent AI technology. At what point would some sort of consciousness enter AI, or will AI even generate consciousness?
And of the record, “this album is now a very different album, having gone through the Covid and lockdown period, I think we’d all agree the world has now changed.”
It begins moodily with a sense of foreboding (a common feeling that runs through the record musically) with ‘Cognitive Dissident’ and the wordy, yearning-for-the-old-days story of a lost London on the oldest song on the album (from the early 2010’s) ‘Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake’. Ensouled may be have been some time coming, but that mega-hiatus (which included a horrible sounding spell of throat surgery, more of that later) has not amended Johnson’s desire to tell stories, nor has it affected his haunted, lived-in emotional, hoary vocal, very reminiscent of a Black Box Recorder-era Luke Haines.
‘Zen & The Art Of Dating’ sees Johnson return to the subject of desire, a subject familiar to those acquainted with his back catalogue, but as time as moved on, so has the convenience to take advantage of his lust, a la Tinder etc. “But she’s dreaming of whiskery lips, kissing their way from ankles to hips. Breasts are yearning, loins are burning”.
Steady on.
The album marks the return of co-producer and engineer Warne Livesey, who previously worked on their two biggest hit records, 1986’s Infected (1986) and follow-up Mind Bomb (1989) and the production really comes to the fore, it’s a well-thought out, nicely put together set of songs, although it could be argued that it may crave a bit more variety in parts.
There’s a noticeable change of mood on the jazzy piano-led ballad ‘I Want To Wake Up With You’ and the sparse ‘Down By The Frozen River’, also dominated by the keys of DC Collard.
It comes across as an album built purely on life experiences over the last quarter of a century, mostly gripping your attention and the instinct to need to know what happens. Speaking of experiences, one of the main tracks on the stronger second half is the woozy ‘Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot’, made up of Johnson’s hospital bed recollections of being struck down with a dangerous, near fatal abscess in his throat, strung out on a mix of morphine and antibiotics.
Critics may say that it could be get a bit ‘old man shouting at the clouds’ due to it’s constant pessimism, but although album highlight ‘Where Do We Go When We Die?’ was written about the death of Johnson’s father, it’s a beautiful jangle.
The point of our First Listen reviews are to sometimes let people comment about bands that they have not heard much of before, and I unashamedly admit to being more au fait with just the hits rather than a deep diver of TT’s back catalogue, (although I will stand firm on the fact that Infected’s ‘Sweet Bird Of Truth’ is one of THE criminally ignored singles of the 1980’s), so I can attest that this is not the record that will suddenly attract the masses (and what album after 25 years would) but this will cement Johnson’s outsider from the mainstream status with his existing fans, and comes across as a record that he needed to make for himself.
