About The The:
The word “soul” has been a recurring one in the story of THE THE: from Matt Johnson’s 1981 neo-psychedelic debut album, Burning Blue Soul, through the shapeshifting musicality of its 1983 successor, Soul Mining, and now with the name of his mercurial band’s 2024 Ensouled World Tour.
The dictionary definition of “ensoul” is “to endow with a soul”. “It’s a fascinating idea,” says Johnson. “At what point does the soul inhabit the body? But more pertinently perhaps – in an era of nascent AI technology – what is the meaning of even being human.”
From the beginnings of THE THE in the late 1970s, Matt Johnson has always been a diviner of truth, whether it be of a personal or political nature. Over four-and-a-half decades he has earned an enduring reputation as a brave and uncompromising artist dealing with dark matters of the heart and delivering prescient socio-political commentary.
Originally conceived less as a traditional band, more a multimedia art collective (inspired by the Plastic Ono Band), THE THE were born out of the teenage Matt Johnson’s experiments with reel-to-reel tape – initially conducted in the basement of his parents’ pub, the Crown, in Loughton, Essex, and at De Wolfe Studios in London’s Soho, where Johnson worked as an apprentice sound engineer and used the downtime to make his own music.
THE THE emerged from the post-punk landscape, in an era of self-taught musicians and DIY experimentation. Combining his passions for film soundtracks and musique concrète with his love of traditional songwriters such as John Lennon, Hank Williams and Robert Johnson, Matt Johnson began to develop a unique sound. His first, low-key release, in 1979, was the limited edition cassette, See Without Being Seen (remastered and reissued in 2020 on his Cinéola label). This in turn led to his signing with 4AD Records for the headspinning Burning Blue Soul, made during intensive recording sessions in ‘81.
“It was done on a shoestring budget,” Johnson remembers. “You went days without sleep and then you would be completely spaced out at the end of it, and you’d get home and put the cassette on and be thrilled with what you’d done. It was a very exciting time.”
More thrilling still was Johnson’s first trip to New York in 1982 to record ‘Uncertain Smile’ with producer Mike Thorne (Wire, Soft Cell): an eventful jaunt involving nocturnal adventures in the Mudd Club and on the edgy streets of Alphabet City. Back in London, the track ignited a bidding war between the major labels, resulting in Stevo Pearce, founder of Some Bizzare Records (whose 1981 compilation, Some Bizzare Album, featured THE THE’s track ‘Untitled’) negotiating a deal with CBS.
“In those days, CBS was known for its support of serious singer-songwriters,” Johnson recalls. “The likes of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen. So, that really appealed to me. And I went with them.”
THE THE’s great leap forward, Soul Mining, followed in 1983. Brilliantly showcasing Matt Johnson’s multifaceted sonic approach – one that encompassed synthesisers and fiddles, drum machines and accordions – it was an astonishing album, particularly as one made by a mere 21-year-old, boldly charting his emotional weather.
“It has a very simple sound in some ways,” Johnson notes, “but it’s very rich and complex in other ways. Some of the lyrics… I obviously wouldn’t write that way now. But the important thing for me is it was sincere. It’s how I felt when I was 21.”
Johnson’s next album was an even more ambitious one. Infected (1986) tackled desire – ‘Out Of The Blue (into the fire)’, ‘Slow Train To Dawn’ – and offered the stirring account of a US fighter pilot losing altitude over the Persian Gulf in ‘Sweet Bird Of Truth’. In ‘Heartland’, he painted a grimly vivid portrait of the UK decaying in the dark days of Thatcherism.
But Infected was a globally-minded album, as made explicit by the accompanying 47-minute, multi-location film made for the album, with a budget of £350,000 (the equivalent of £1.1 million today). Shot in Bolivia, Peru, New York and London, its Herzog-like journey into the heart of darkness involved dangerous encounters with South American communist rebel fighters and Spanish Harlem street gangs. The result was a wholly intoxicating audio-visual experience, in which the sheer authenticity of these mad adventures gripped the viewer to the screen.
“That’s what you do at that age,” Johnson points out, laughing. “You’re fearless.”