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.
“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.
