The The

The The is the project of Matt Johnson, who emerged as one of the most prominent figures on the English post-punk scene.

Born in '61, singer and eclectic guitarist, the young Johnson began his career in 1979, debuting with Gadgets. After releasing two albums, "Gadgetrees" (1979) and "Love Curiosity Freeckles And Doubt" (1980), he chose to go solo in 1980, putting out the singles "Controversial Subject" and, the following year, "Cold Spell Head".

The onset of his artistic maturity came with his first two albums: "Burning Blue Soul" (1981) and the never-released "The Pornography Of Despair". On these two records he broadened his musical outlook, veering towards a lyrical, introspective songwriting style, enriching his singing with sounds that blend soul, jazz and a fairy-tale-tinged psychedelia.

The following year Johnson changed course once again, confirming his eclectic, ever-evolving spirit, forever in search of new sonic trends. In 1979 he decided to christen his project with the odd moniker "The The". Outside, in London, punk and its amphetamine-fuelled speed were still raging. Johnson, on the other hand, was dreaming up slow-motion music, sounds that paid tribute to a world - the blues - distant yet, in attitude, close to punk. He set off down the luminous paths of disco music, debuting with the single "Uncertain Smile". Soul-jazz fusions define the track that launched the group onto the vast English synth-pop scene.

In 1983 came the first, pivotal The The album, “Soul Mining“. A crystalline collage of mischievous polyrhythmic melodies; the essence of the songs lies entirely in Johnson's ease at reinventing the concept of "danceable" pop music, giving it a flavour that blends soul, jazz, funk, world-beat and techno-pop. The disguise Johnson adopts to conceal his precious inspirations is disco music, which sheds certain easy stereotypes to suddenly climb onto harmonic structures of far greater complexity.

As even the titles of the first two albums announce, Matt's favourite subject matter is the soul. The stirrings of a "sick" soul are also at the heart of "Infected" (1986), while mental illness (a primary element of The The's music) takes centre stage on "Mind Bomb", the last album of major impact, conceived with the involvement of Johnny Marr (guitarist of the Smiths) and featuring a single that went down in history as "The Beat(en) Generation".

Then, between "Nakedself" and "Mind Bomb" came a long period of silence, broken only by an album that went largely unnoticed ("Dusk") and a "tribute" record to Hank Williams ("Hanky Panky").

In total, across four decades, The The have released just five studio albums of original songs: "Soul Mining" (1983), "Infected" (1986), "Mind Bomb" (1989), "Dusk" (1993) and "NakedSelf" (2000). They have also made cover albums, such as "Hanky Panky"; film soundtracks, including "Hyena", "Tony", "Muscle" and "Moonbug"; art installations; a podcast series, "Radio Cinéola"; a well-received 84-minute documentary, "The Inertia Variations"; and various books, including the biography "Long Shadows, High Hopes: The Life and Times of Matt Johnson & The The".

In 2024 comes the first studio album of new songs in a quarter of a century for the storied band led by Matt Johnson. It's called "Ensoulment". The album's themes, a press note explains, range from love to sex, from war to politics, from life to death, attempting to explain what it means to be human in the 21st century. A record that carries echoes of the band's musical past while also being fully representative of the ever-shifting "here and now" of Johnson's project, one that never shies away from confronting the emotional complexity of the human condition: intimacy in an age of alienation, democracy in the era of post-truth and the relentless rise of artificial intelligence.