The The – Ensoulment, Vinyl 2xLP

Sustenance for anyone who feels popular music currently lacks political/philosophical engagement, The The’s first studio album in 25 years finds Matt Johnson updating his ever-pointed ruminations on Perfidious Albion/our hot rails to hell.

“Kissing the ring of POTUS”; trying to stay sane in the post-truth age; flagshaggers and AI’s unnerving creep – it’s not pretty, per se, but Ensoulment has a dark, elegiac beauty, suitably sickly guitars (Cognitive Dissident) and Johnson’s desiccated baritone vying with electric piano smudges, horns, upright bass and upright piano. There are diary entries here too, hence Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot’s trippy, sensual evocation of Johnson’s morphined 2020 hospitalisation with a near-fatal throat abscess. Sometimes co-written with The The’s guitarist Barrie Cadogan or keyboardist DC Collard, these 12 songs cement Johnson’s ‘cherishable agitator’ status. And – whisper it – there’s hope here, too.

https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/new-music/the-the-ensoulment-reviewed/

Tracklisting

Cognitive Dissident
Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake
Zen & The Art Of Dating
Kissing The Ring Of POTUS
Life After Life
I Want To Wake Up With You
Down By The Frozen River
Risin’ Above The Need
Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot
Where Do We Go When We Die?
I Hope You Remember (The Things I Can’t Forget)
A Rainy Day In May