If you know The The, you know about the ballads of the most popular release, 1983’s Soul Mining. Some quintessential ’80s Post-Punk Synth-Pop from Britain, leading man Matt Johnson had success only a few years after he formed the band in the late ’70s. Now forty years later a new sound has been unleashed by the band. One that is a little less hopeful but still full of the iconic bass-toned singing. On the brand-new release of Ensoulment on September 6, 2024, Johnson embraces a view of the earth as seen through the gothic lens of Bram Stoker, Mary Stewart, or Mary Shelley.
The The’s first studio album in twenty-five years, is the seventh release by the band overall, if you do not include the time spent making various movie soundtracks through the 2010s and the Radio Cineola trilogy released in 2017. It is well known that The The is a changing cast of characters with only one constant… and that is Matt Johnson. For Ensoulment Johnson wrote and produced all the music, but was joined by DC Collard, Earl Harvin, James Eller, Barrie Cadogan, Gillian Glover, Terry Edwards, and Danny Cummings.
This all taken into consideration, you can thank Gillian Glover for the haunting female vocals that complete “Down By The Frozen River” and James Eller for the droning bass and dark movements that blend the songs into a complete artwork. This is an album with lots of possibilities, it is an exciting full-length release. However, to fully enjoy you must sink into the music and absorb the environmental Goth Rock.
A manifestation of disgust for the modern world. The anger and dissonance is palpable in this album. The best example of this is in the most gothic of the songs “Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave of William Blake.” A mouthful of a title should clue you into the graveyard sounds and haunting vocals of Johnson. Destitute and lonesome, there is also a chilling message sneaking through the drums and it is one of the stronger songs lyrically.
Some of these songs accidentally give way to one of two difficulties. Either they sound cliché and unnatural, or overtly abstract. Both of these issues result in the song losing its lyrical cornerstone. “Kissing the Ring of POTUS” can make up for it with the stellar atmospheric sound that rushes the ear, but “Cognitive Dissonant” goes a little too far in its 1984-esque descriptors and loses itself despite the drone of ornately dark sound. It is hard to make a song not sound contrived with the bridge and chorus telling you, “Left is Right, Black is White/Inside out, Hope is doubt.” Some pretty basic end-of-the-world speak if that even exists…
Thematically Ensoulment starts low and hopeless, and soars for a moment with the tracks “I Want to Wake Up With You,” “Down By the Frozen River,” and “Risin’ Above the Need,” before dropping back to the muddy underground afterward. These three songs have an escapist mood to them. This is as Johnson turns the gothic wasteland into an obstacle of the mind, and here he must set them aside to see the possibilities of the world. The chances of love, living happily outside of the system, and finding bliss in the bloodstorm, are what these three songs emanate. They pack a punch and when the album is listened to in its entirety, it is these three that wrap the work together. They are the window to the greater world, the reality checks that save the depressive episode from having no purpose.
Furthermore, these cuts lead to arguably the best song on the album, “Linoleum Smooth to the Stockinged Foot.” This electronic pulsating sound is reminiscent of the time when the shoegaze subset of Britpop was making its appearance on the scene. The images built by the lyrics are incomplete and hazy, while the sound of each word is more important than its meaning. The poetry of Johnson moves across the mind as the guitar slowly builds into something greater than simply music. This is an exhibition of sounds meant to be felt, not heard. It is eerie, conflagrant, jazzy, and born from the murk of reality.
In the end, The The’s Ensoulment is a gothic soundscape that visits simple themes with common ideologies. An album leaking with emotional guitar, and chilling piano, while spewing endearingly melancholy themes, CrypticRock gives Ensoulment 4.5 out of 5 stars.
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