After a long hiatus, Matt Johnson, leader of the British group, rediscovers the melancholic verve of his beginnings.
Matt Johnson’s life is a story of erasure and mourning. The mastermind since 1980 of The The, both a solo project and a group with variable geometry, the Londoner, who went from synthetic new wave to twilight pop, found success from his first album (official, there were others before) Soul Mining in 1983, stormed the top 30 with Infecteda violently political record, then with Mind Bomb et Dusk before letting go of the ramp from 1989 and the sudden death of his younger brother, Andy Dog, graphic designer of his covers. Little by little, he will sink: a depression that does not say its name, alcohol, drugs, a persistent chronic fatigue syndrome, the music world whose rules he no longer understands… In 2000, he is dry, unable to write a line. The The is no more. For ten years, he hides away, returns to live with his father, rebuilds himself.
In 2010, The The was reborn as a film music composer and web radio host. The death of his older brother in 2016, a new electroshock, brought him out of his torpor. Convinced that everyone had forgotten him, Johnson reluctantly scheduled three London concerts. Tickets were snapped up and a world tour was born. Driven by a new energy, The The went into the studio, and the result, the unexpected Ensoulment, will not surprise those who followed him during his glory years. Apart from the singing, deeper and calmer with age, we find everything that makes his strength: a finely crafted, artisan pop, slow tempos and chiaroscuro atmospheres. Not to mention the literary lyrics, both brilliant and talkative. Johnson never talks about himself, but about the world around him that he does not understand: the transformation of London by property developers (Some Days I Drink my Coffee by the Grave of William Blake), the flaws of the education system, life/death… And when he gives himself up, with Linoleum Smooth to the Stockinged Foot, is to tell the story of the Covid crisis from the inside. In the middle of a pandemic, he found himself bedridden under morphine after a major surgical operation. Out of fashion, a little gloomy, The The signs with Ensoulment a return as unexpected as it was generally successful.
The The Ensoulment (Cinéola /Ear Music)
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