The The

Matt Johnson is 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 on the hunt for new sonic trends. He decided to christen his musical project with the odd moniker "The The" and set off down the bright path 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, essential The The album, "Soul Mining". A crystalline collage of cunning polyrhythmic melodies; the essence of the songs lies entirely in Johnson's ease at reinventing the concept of "dance" 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 the genre's easy stereotypes to leap suddenly into harmonic constructions of far greater complexity.

The album opens with "I've Been Waiting For Tomorrow (All Of My Life)", an irresistible speed-funk track launched by explosions and countdowns in a cosmic videogame style. The following "This Is The Day" gently lands the listener on delicate, light pop melodies, cradled by a synthetic accordion that lends the track a vaguely retro flavour and feel.

"Sinking Feeling" alternates the carefree, danceable quality of Johnson's singing with complex layerings, tied together at the song's tail end by a dreamlike organ. The single released the previous year, "Uncertain Smile", has the seductive peculiarity of pairing a soul fabric with core jazz elements, such as the unforgettable closing piano passage. Johnson is without doubt one of the most ingenious melodic craftsmen of the post-punk era, skilled at softening the alienation of everyday life and its irritating noise.

The following "Twilight Hours" blends exotic world-beat with engaging vocal phrasing; Johnson's voice shapes the song's structure, giving it a stronger emotional charge.

The unsettling echo of a night-time siren opens the title track, an exotic ballad with an enigmatic flavour, in which what draws you in most is the melancholic vein of Johnson's guitar. The crescendo of "Giant" is one of the most multifaceted and inspired rhythmic solutions of his entire career: after five minutes of intense, wholesome engagement supplied by the carefree bass and an inlay of percussion and drum machine, the track's structure evolves into a tribal funk-dance, an adrenaline-fuelled forerunner of so much of today's house alchemy.

Closing the record is "Perfect": here too the funk-soul cocktail is served with class and elegance, aided by David Johansen's contribution on harmonica: one of the many collaborators Johnson surrounded himself with in that period (among them Thomas Leer and Zeke Manyika also stand out).

"Soul Mining", in short, is fundamentally a pop album, enriched by seductive atmospheres and top-class melodic versatility; both in the surface textures and in the deeper layers of its tracks, one can make out a constant pursuit of catchiness, indissolubly bound to the elegance and complexity of a sonic exploration that would keep the enigmatic Matt Johnson at the forefront in the years to come.

Note: for the sake of accuracy, "Perfect" was left off the first vinyl edition for the European market, but was included in the editions released for Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, as well as in all cassette versions (Europe included this time) and in all CD editions issued between 1984 and 1990. The physical reissues released between 2002 and 2022 have excluded it once again, in contrast with streaming services, which regularly include it.

Finally, it's worth noting that the versions of "This Is The Day", "Uncertain Smile" and "Perfect" featured on the tracklist are not the ones originally released as singles between October 1982 and September 1983: all three were in fact re-recorded from scratch for inclusion on the album.

Note by Federico Romagnoli

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13/11/2006