Ensoulment

About

It’s 1983. Amid a characteristic London downpour, “a broken soul,” feeling the sting of unrequited love, “stares from a pair of watering eyes” up to the window of the object of his infatuation. “Uncertain emotions force an uncertain smile,” sings Matt Johnson, completing the verse to one of The The’s most well-known songs from their official debut album, the era-defining <i>Soul Mining</i>. More than 40 years later, on “I Want to Wake Up With You,” that same character reenters the frame, in a scene not unlike the one before: “Standing on the corner, in the rain, looking up at your window—again,” croons Johnson in his now signature baritone. “A long time ago, another life, and though not a boy, barely a man. 'Just bring whatever you hope to find,' so I brought my soul and a bellyful of wine.” It might be an alternate ending to an old story. It might be Johnson finding himself in a familiar place under different circumstance. But whatever it i, it’s an acknowledgment that our perspective, as it shifts and morphs over the year, sharpens as it soften. That we ultimately bring to life's experiences whatever we want to get out of them. And maybe it takes you four decades to realize that. For as long as Johnson has been making music, whether on his own or with the rotating cast of musicians who’ve come to define The The, he’s been musing on existence—and what it means to have a soul. (In case album titles such as <i>Burning Blue Soul</i>,<i>Soul Mining</i>, and now <i>Ensoulment</i> didn’t give that away.) These songs—his first album of new, non-soundtrack music since 2000’s <i>NakedSelf</i>—are rich in those theme, and particularly how one's existence can be so infected by toxic politic. The charging “Cognitive Dissident,” which seems of a piece with his last album’s “Global Eye,” is a thinking person’s treatise on the contradictions that define modern living. “Some Days I Drink My Coffee by the Grave of William Blake” is a moody ode to pre-Brexit England. And the subdued but biting “Kissing the Ring of POTUS” probably doesn’t really need much spelling out (though it’s worth noting that it’s not about Joe Biden). .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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