The The – Ensoulment review

For an artist who had much to say during the twentieth century, Matt Johnson has remained comparatively quiet during this. After founding The The as a collective in the early 1980’s he was responsible on Soul Mining (1983) Infected (’86), Mind Bomb (’89) and Dusk (’93) for some of the most lyrically caustic yet beautiful music it was to experience.

Surprisingly given that, The The were in their own terms successful, featured collaborations with Neneh Cherry and Sinéad O’Connor and once boasted Johnny Marr in their touring line up. Things would eventually sour for Johnson as 1997’s Gun Sluts went unreleased, whilst it seemed time on the millennial turning Naked Self had caught up with him.

Ensoulment was originally due around the time Johnson first revived The The as a concept in 2018, but was fundamentally changed by both the pandemic and after he contracted a near fatal pharyngeal abscess in his throat. Unsurprisingly perhaps, mortality casts a long shadow, particularly on tracks such as Life After Life and Where Do We Go When We Die? But the knack of skewering society’s foibles is still prominent on opener Cognitive Dissident, Kissing The Ring of POTUS and the ode to lost London of Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake.

Less expected but just as welcome are ruminations on modern relationships as captured on Zen & The Art Of Dating, a subject for which is growl-whisper seems more fitting and that the music – an amalgam of blues, folk and rootsy arcana first heard on Dusk – complements. Bruised as most are, on closer A Rainy Day In May there’s even for the singer a hint of emotional wreckage being salvaged after a chance encounter, bringing about the realisation that after nearly quarter of a century of relative silence, it’s less about what the voice is now saying, more that it’s good to hear it again.

You can read a full review here.