The Heartland of The The

Craig Stephen offers a part-album review, part career overview of Matt Johnson’s extraordinary The The:

In 1986 the airwaves were blasting out an aural pollution of chart-friendly guff by the likes of Whitney Houston, Chris de Burgh, Berlin, Sinitta and Level 42. Australian soap opera actors, Page Three models and soft rock acts all added to the agony. It was safe, bland and apolitical.

Into this quagmire of mediocrity came a song by a band that stated that Britain was a territorial outpost of the United States and that Thatcherism was evil. “This is the 51st state of the Yooo Esss Ayyy,” sang Matt Johnson, the frontman and writer of the band magnificently monikered The The.

While only a minor hit in the UK, the single had an immense effect on the likes of myself and others crying out for something different. Lyrics like this were just so far out of the mainstream loop, offering an alternative view of the supposed “greed is good” manifesto punted to a country riven by class division, the deliberate destruction of traditional industries, and the huge increases in levels of unemployment.

“This is the place, where pensioners are raped/ And the hearts are being cut from the welfare state/ Let the poor drink the milk while the rich eat the honey/ Let the bums count their blessings while they count the money,” went one verse and it was hard to disagree with any of it.

‘Heartland’ was the teaser single from The The’s third album, Infected, released in the same year to massive acclaim. Infected only contained eight songs but every single one was a thing of beauty. No fillers on this baby.

On ‘Sweet Bird of Truth’, another single, albeit not a chart botherer, Johnson took on the troubles of the Middle East and specifically America’s military encroachment there. It begins with a mock radio conversation between a pilot and radio control in which the use of napalm is requested and approved.

The album took Johnson to another level. He’d released two early albums, one resolutely experimental and in his name alone; the other, Soul Mining, a classic of the early 80s, containing two exceptional singles, ‘This Is The Day’ and ‘Uncertain Smile’. Soul Mining was an odd collection for the time, rooted in post-punk but featuring synthesisers - the weapon of choice of the New Romantics - and contained touches of the nascent New York club scene. It was critically acclaimed for its uniqueness but sold little, however subsequent reissues have sold well, a testament to its timeless qualities.

 On Infected, Johnson was frustrated with the way the world was swinging behind neoliberalism and the betrayal of the working class, especially in the track ‘Angels of Deception’.

“Jesus Wept, Jesus Christ/ I can't see for the tear gas and the dollar signs in my eyes/ Well, what's a man got left to fight for/ When he's bought his freedom/ By the look of this human jungle/ It ain't just the poor who'll be bleeding …”

Matt Johnson was the centre point for the band and the album, and drummer Dave Palmer was the only other regular musician to be part of the team. There are cameo appearances for Neneh Cherry (pre-‘Buffalo Stance’), Orange Juice’s Zeke Manyika, the Astarti String Orchestra, and arrangers Andrew Poppy and Anne Dudley. It also featured Louis Jardine on percussion, and there’s credits for all sorts of people such as producer Warne Livesey and various engineers, but Johnson’s name is all over this.

To promote Infected, Johnson made a video for each track which cost about £350,000, a then unheard of amount for an act that hadn’t been active for over three years, had a cult following and were on an indie label, Some Bizarre. The film followed the track listing so it began with ‘Heartland’ which was shot at Greenwich Power Station in London. A chunk of the cost was due to the crew going into the Peruvian jungle to film, Johnson clearly not wanting to do things by halves. The indigenous people that the crew used as guides introduced Johnson and co to the hallucinogenic concoctions used in their tribal rituals, with predictable results. Johnson admitted that while he was completely out of it for the filming he was bitten by a monkey, cut a stranger with a knife in a bizarre blood brother ritual, and grappled with a snake. The opening scene of the title track has Johnson strapped to a chair on board a boat sailing down a river in the jungle.

‘Out of the Blue’ was partly shot in a New York brothel with police protecting the crew from the dealers inhabiting a neighbouring crack house. During the filming of ‘Twilight of a Champion’, Johnson placed a gun with live bullets in his mouth. Just for the hell of it.

Infected: The Movie was given a bona fide premiere, in London, and was aired twice on Channel 4 and later on MTV. A video was issued at the time but it is yet to be released on DVD. Both the album and the film received rave reviews from the then influential music press, with Melody Maker’s reviewer stating: “Kicking concepts of democratic creativity in the kidneys, Johnson has justifiably come out with a one-man vision of terrifying proportions” while the glossy Q magazine described the album as "grim stuff, with the lyrical tension well-matched by the music”, and picturing it as a collision between Soft Cell and Tom Waits. Which is uncanny as there is a strong Waits influence on Infected – particularly the vocal technique on ‘Sweet Bird of Truth’ – and Waits was touted and approached to be the record’s producer. 

The weekly Record Mirror felt that “What becomes clear, however, is that we are dealing with something special ... Infected might not be a particularly optimistic record, but it is rather a good one.”

As well as numerous appearances in the end-of-year album lists, Infected made Q’s 100 Greatest British Albums, 14 years after its release. The CD version accompanying the LP included three 12-inch remixes, but the 2002 remastered reissue didn’t even bother including those. It’s probably overdue a deluxe super special eight-edition release with free postcards.

The effect of such an ambitious project as Infected took its toll on the protagonist and he took a couple of years off. When he returned to the studio it was with a band, and the line-up included former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, James Eller from Julian Cope’s backing band and Palmer. This was certainly a marked deviation from the previous album. Less fancy instrumentation, more back-to-basics rock and pop. And again, eight tracks all stretching as far as Johnson could spin them in terms of the clock. Even the artwork was more in line with the move toward minimalism, a generally white cover with Johnson’s face jutting out. Could’ve been a Pet Shop Boys album if you didn’t look closely enough.

 Mind Bomb was still an excellent work and the title wasn’t too far off the mark. It was at times slow and required patience, but that fortitude would bear great fruit for the listener. ‘The Beat(en) Generation’ was a full-on pop song that made the Top 20 in Britain. Not that it was ever a radio-friendly fluffy DJ pleaser as the lyrics of the first few lines will attest.

“When you cast your eyes upon the skylines/ Of this once proud nation/ Can you sense the fear and the hatred/ Growing in the hearts of its population/ And youth, oh youth, are being seduced/ By the greedy hands of politics and half truths.”

It may have been released in 1989 but those lyrics apply now in a country bitterly divided economically, socially and geographically.

While it wasn’t as loved by the critics as its predecessor, Mind Bomb remains one of the finest albums to carry The The’s name, with one writer observing that it was: "slow, expansive, looming into inexorable life with a rage that smouldered rather than flamed.”

Four years later The The were back, for the album Dusk, with the same line-up of Johnson, Marr, Eller and Palmer with various guest appearances, though no one with the profile of Sinead O’Connor who guested on one track from Mind Bomb.

It was something of a retreat in terms of Johnson’s usual ambitions; the lyrics were more apolitical and the arrangements more restrained. The singer sounded less heretical, shifting from the politics of the world to the politics of the individual, for example on ‘Lonely Planet’s chorus: “If you can't change the world, change yourself.”

There’s a sexual element to the album, and it’s hardly concealed: the single ‘Dogs of Lust’ hardly needs much explaining, but here’s a teaser: “When you're lustful/ When you're lonely/ And the heat is rising slowly.”

There’s love and desire all over the album but also a snippet of the subject matters so beloved of albums of yore. Back we go to ‘Lonely Planet’ and the closing line of the extended second chorus which, after numerous intonations of that call to change yourself, turns around to state: “And if you can't change yourself then change your world.”

The band was ditched for 1995’s Hanky Panky, a nod to the artist providing all 11 tracks – Hank Williams, writer of country and western standards such as ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’, ‘I Saw The Light’ and ‘Honky Tonkin’, all of which are covered by Johnson and his backing band of people with names like Reverend Brian McLeod and Gentleman Jim Fitting. That it was better received in the United States than the UK reveals the nature of the songs. But it was one for the devoted only. 

In the time since, The The has barely been heard. There’ve been occasional releases, such as the low-key bluesy Naked Self album from 2000 and a pair of new tracks for a compilation album 45 RPM: The Singles of The The. Then, for 14 long years, barely a peep, nothing much more than obscure soundtracks, download-only singles and a couple of one-off singles for Record Store Day. Late last year came The Comeback Special: Live at the Royal Albert Hall.

Whether the “comeback” is another one-off or a tangible return to the album-tour-acoustic radio session circuit remains to be seen. The brilliant ‘We Can’t Stop What’s Coming’ for Record Store Day 2017 suggests The The are still very capable of writing and recording excellent songs. But if there’s no new material I can still wallow in four fine albums of individuality and class.