10.17.25 The The played at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan as part of the Ensouled World Tour. Matt Johnson was in excellent form and they performed two sets - first the new album in its entirety, and then a set of older works and hits, to a rapturous crowd. Matt Johnson was joined by James Eller: Bass guitar and backing vocals DC Collard: Keyboards and harmonica Barrie Cadogan: Lead guitar and backing vocals and a new drummer called Chris (didn't catch his last name). This video is a bit dodgy as they requested no phones so I shot a bit on the down low.
Reading the Hermetica: Consecration, Ensoulment, and Sacrifice in Hephaistion of Thebe's "Apotelesmatics"
For this week’s Reading the Hermetica discussion, we’re wrapping up our look at technical Hermetic texts (and the series generally!), focusing this time on a section from the Apotelesmatics of Hephaistion of Thebes (book III, chapters 6 and 7).
For this (last) week, we’ll talk about the Apotelesmatics of Hephaistion of Thebes, specifically book III, chapters 6 and 7 (and a bit of chapter 8 that…
Matt Johnson comes back from a quarter century hiatus steeped in elegant venom, poised in graceful disdain. Let ABC fold and the tech titans pay tribute, The The’s proprietor refuses to pull punches. Here he is in “Kissing the Ring of POTUS,” spitting out intricate lines with interlocking internal rhymes and also, by the by, nailing the zeitgeist: “So, is this how the Empire dies?/Its constitution withered on the vine/Propped up by the dollar and the drone/Slumped upon a degenerating throne.”
His last album per se, NakedSelf, came out in 1999, several eons ago by cultural standards, yet he jumps right back into the middle of it, excoriating edgelord politicians, Britain’s fall, pseudoscience, censorship and internet dating. In fact, especially that last thing. Here’s the quatrain that should sink Tinder forever (but won’t): “A vast mosaic of electric eyes/Watches the slaves of desires/The virtual lives – lonely struggling/Endless lies – loveless coupling/The dance of strangers who'll never meet.”
Johnson basically is The The, the only constant member (he notably had Johnny Marr in the band for a time, but years ago). However, he works this time with a band that’s been well broken in. Bassist James Eller and keyboardist DC Collard have been backing Johnson since the late 1980s, Earl Harvin from 1998 on and only Barrie Cadogan is a relative newcomer who joined in 2018. Thus, the band is well-equipped to support Johnson’s acid asides, his astute observations, his nimble configurations of sounds and rhythm and meaning, with lounge-y, jazzy decadence. They smolder and loom in the shadows, then burst into elaborate crescendos. A guitar saws at the foundations in opener “Cognitive Dissident” as twitchy, techy percussion raises a frisson of doomed hedonism.
As a listener who was aware of The The in the heyday, but not really paying attention, the arrangements here seem a good deal more organic than they used to be. They’re less tethered to the dancier side of post-punk and less reliant on synths. The song that came to mind, repeatedly, in listening to Ensoulment was Leonard Cohen’s “The Future,” for its pitch black humors and poetic litanies.
This has been a terrific year for unexpected returns, and what you realize after listening to latter-day albums by the Cure, Nick Cave and The The, is how younger people sweep death under the table and refuse to look at it, even when it presents itself. By contrast, these older artists ruminate on endings, turning them over in their minds, poking at them to see if they can pry the meaning out. And this is useful, not just for listeners of their own generation, but all of us.
It's worth noting that Ensoulment came to Johnson after heavy loss, first of his brother Andrew who drew the cover art (and most The The cover art) and later of his father. Mortality runs all through this album, but especially in the lovely, elegiac “Where Do We Go When We Die?” near the end. The song resonates because it combines the specific with the mystical, in a way that reflects lived experience. A death sets off an endless round of obligations— “To the sound of raindrops/To the ticking of the clock/We packed your clothes and your books/Took them to the charity shop”— but also opens a window to the spiritual (“Sons become fathers – fathers become sons/And as the river flows back into the sea – then so shall we.”) The mixture of the mundane and the otherworldly is powerful. The writing is exceptionally good. You probably forgot about The The (I did), but it’s time to take notice again.
Etichetta: Cineola MusicTracce: 12 – Durata: 45:20Genere: Pop Rock, CantautoriSito: thethe.comVoto: 8/10
Forse contribuisce anche il lungo lasso di tempo che, al netto di alcune colonne sonore uscite col moniker ufficiale the The, separa Ensoulment dal precedente album della band di Matt Johnson (Nakedself, 2000) da quasi mezzo secolo ma… la sensazione è quella di stare al cospetto di un disco…
The new music video for ‘Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot’ was made in conjunction with long-time collaborators: directed by Tim Pope with editing and VFX by Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) and Peter Knight, with Anya Krasnikova as Director of Photography. The lyrics for this song were written from Matt Johnson’s hospital bed under the influence of morphine, whilst recovering from a life-saving operation. As fate would have it, Johnson’s weeks in hospital had nothing to do with Covid, but occurred at precisely the time Covid reached crisis proportions, making for an even more surreal ordeal. The discordant interplay between horns and fiddle is redolent of Johnson’s hallucinogenic, surreal experience, which he tried to emulate by asking the musicians to improvise over the track, without hearing the other’s contribution, as he manipulated the sounds in real time. ‘Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot’ is unique in that it does not feature any of the core band members apart from Johnson on vocals, guitar and bass, plus guest musicians Sonya Cullingford on fiddle, Terry Edwards on horns, Gillian Glover providing backing vocals, and hand claps from percussionist Danny Cummings. Co-produced by Matt Johnson and Warne Livesey.
Ensoulment will be released on 6th Sept (Cinéola / earMUSIC) and can be pre-ordered here: https://thethe.lnk.to/EnsoulmentPR
