Matt Johnson must have a very specific combination of Google alerts set up that serve as an invisible Bat Signal, because he resurrected his long-dormant, thinking man’s alt-rock project The The precisely when the universe needed him the most. It had been nearly a quarter of a century since the band’s last album, 2000’s NakedSelf. He would have been forgiven if he hadn’t answered the call.
But Matt’s seen this movie before. The The’s 1986 album Infected took Thatcherism to the woodshed, so it should be a surprise to no one familiar with the band that their new album Ensoulment speaks a similar truth to power. Popdose caught up with Johnson to talk about the album, the multiverse, and album reviews where a writer may have made a joke that was once cited as a fact in a Wikipedia entry. And yes, that writer may be me.
You should know that when my wife and I got married, our wedding program contained the line, “This is the day when things fall into place.” When our son was born a few years later, the birth announcement contained the line, “This is the day your life will surely change.” It is not hyperbole when I say that your music has been a big part of the soundtrack to our lives, and I thank you for that.
Matt gave me a lovely response to this, but I was so excited to start the chat that I forgot to hit Record until immediately after he finished responding. Fortunately, being the thoughtful soul that he is, he circles back to this later.
So where are you at the moment?
I live in Madison, Wisconsin. Have you been here?
I don’t think I have, actually, All tours tend to blur after a while over the years, but I don’t think I have. I’ve heard of it, obviously, but I haven’t been there. [Note: we chat for a bit about the wildfires in Los Angeles. He has friends who have lost their homes. “It looks like Hiroshima,” he says, then talks about rumors of arsonists literally fanning the flames. It’s clear he is concerned and heartbroken about what is happening there. I feel slightly guilty for steering the conversation back to him.]
Congrats on the new album. I love it.
Thank you.
I’m curious, though, to know when the song cycle for Ensoulment started. In particular, I’m looking at “Kissing the Ring of POTUS,” and wondering if it was written the first time He Who Must Not Be Named was in charge, or if you have a time machine, and you knew what was coming. (Note: Ensoulment was released two months before the 2024 General Election.)
Well, it’s not specifically about [long pause] him. It’s really about the current state of American politics and the neocon, neoliberal takeover that’s happened over the past few decades. It’s the lobbyists, the pro-war politicians, and endless privatizations. And so It would have fitted whoever had become President out of the current rogues gallery. That’s the same as the situation we have in England, really. The politicians don’t represent the population or the citizens. They represent other outside interests, big business, the owners of the country, and these endless wars that have been going on for decades, it’s not just under Trump. Ironically, so he claims, he didn’t start any wars, unlike everyone else, every other [President], the last 30-odd years, it’s been endless war. But yeah, [the song] certainly fits in with the mood, the current mood. I can see that.
And we have similar problems in England, we’ve got we had a general election fairly recently and the Labour Party – and it’s not even really even the Labour Party anymore. The old Labour Party is the party that I used to support, who were similar, I suppose, in some respects, to the old Democrat[ic] party in in America – but all these parties have been infiltrated by what we call the extreme center, politicians that claim to represent moderation in the center ground, but what they really stand for is endless wars and warmongering and endless privatization, and the transfer of public wealth to the private sector. They’re all the same across Western Europe. So it’s this plague that has infected Western democracy over the last few decades, and that’s why you get a reaction from the populations, I think. Why Brexit happened and why Trump got in [were] because people don’t know where to start, where to where to go, who to turn to. And they’re so angry, and so they’re making these strange decisions because they are reacting against in England what’s known as the Westminster Bubble, the political class that are very insulated from the rest of the population, and who don’t represent the rest of the population. And so you got this problem all across, as I said, Western Europe, the UK, America, which is a dangerous situation, really, because there’s such mistrust of the political class and the media, and it does leave the way open for extremism. I suppose.
Sad, but true. “Zen and the Art of Dating,” meanwhile, is also terrifying, but for completely different reasons. I hope that song wasn’t born out of personal experience.
No, it wasn’t, and I tried to give all of the songs a bit of a positive ending, although there’s a lot of fairly serious subject matter. Pertinent subject matter. But “Zen and the Art of Dating” it’s really about intimacy in the age of alienation, and the rise of AI is [referred to] a few times throughout the album, but on that song in particular, I try to give it a bit of a happy ending. The line, “Though it’s a cliché – maybe it’s true! / That only when you stop searching for love / Will love come searching for you,” there’s a problem that I suppose most of us have, really, is that expecting another person to somehow make us complete, or that just finding another person when it’s, you know, particularly these days in when it’s online, virtually, will somehow fill the God-shaped hole.
But the point I’m trying to make in the song is by becoming more whole in oneself – happier, healthier within one’s own soul and heart – then one is not searching for love to make one whole. But by that process, that’s when, paradoxically, love then comes into you because you’re not searching for something: you already possess it, and then it becomes attracted to you. So the first couple of verses take a slightly darker point of view: the first one’s from the female point of view, then the second verse is from the male point of view, and the third one is more of an overview. But the last line is really the positive line out of that song. And there’s a lot of humor in that song as well. It’s black comedy, really.
It’s been decades since I’ve been in that game, but how you described it, love will come searching for you, is exactly how it turned out for me, so that line rang very true to me.
Excellent. I like to hear that.
What I like about the album is how cohesive the songs are, that they sound like they belong only with each other, with one exception: I feel like “Life After Life” would have worked on almost any other album of yours.
That’s interesting. I mean, it’s hard for me to…obviously, I’m in the in the center of it, in the middle of it. It’s hard for me to have that objective viewpoint between the albums. But that was written with all the other songs. In fact, for me, the song that possibly doesn’t sound like it belongs – though I do think it does belong – but the one that stands out of it is probably “Linoleum Smooth [to the Stockinged Foot],” purely because the band aren’t on that. It’s just me and the different session musicians that I brought in: Terry Edwards on horn, Sonia Cullingford on fiddle, Gillian Glover on backing vocals, and Danny Cummings on percussion. And me, we’re the only ones on that. So that is that is quite different to the rest of the album.
In terms of “Life after Life,” I don’t know. I think it fits pretty well. I mean, that was written in the middle of the writing process, whereas a song like “Some Days I Drink My Coffee by the Grave of William Blake,” that’s a song I’d started about 10 years ago, but I never got beyond the first chorus, so I revisited that and managed to finish that. And “A Rainy Day in May,” that’s another song that was hanging around for a while that I hadn’t finished, and again, I hadn’t got past the first verse or chorus. So those two are of a slightly different, earlier era, although they were only properly finished during this batch of writing and recording. And “Linoleum” was the last track done, and that was after I’d finished with the band doing the backing tracks for the main album, and I wanted a 12th track, and I had the lyrics. I was working on the lyrics of that. And so that’s why that sounded different. But yeah, “Life after Life,” interesting. Why do you say that? Why do you think it sounded different to the rest of the album?
I’m not saying that it doesn’t belong with these tracks. What I’m saying is that I could hear it on, like, Dusk (1993), or Infected (1986).
Yeah.
I feel like it would have fit in with those albums as well.
Interesting. Yeah, yeah, I think if there was an album of mine that I would say, Ensoulment is probably closer to, it probably will be Dusk. probably because of the instrumentation, the way that it was recorded, with a band essentially playing live. Obviously, there were overdubs and editing afterwards. So Dusk is what Ensoulment most closely resembles in terms of the process, and the way that I work with a band, there’s a similarity there. And [both albums are] quite melodic, and also, I suppose, both albums were created in the shadow of bereavement. [Note: Johnson’s younger brother Eugene passed away in 1989, and his older brother Andy passed away in 2016.] So there’s a lot of similarities in that way between the two albums.
While we’re talking about your band, tell me about getting back together with [producer] Warne Livesley and the band that you worked with on Mindbomb. How long did it take for the muscle memory to kick in?
Well, Warne left England many decades ago, and he relocated to Canada, initially to the Vancouver area, and then he moved to Toronto. And we kept in touch over the years, and I’d seen him when he was visiting England, or if I was in Canada on tour, so we had spoken over the years about working together again, and this seemed the right project to do it with. Obviously, it was the first album in many years, and I’ve only been doing soundtracks and one-off singles [since NakedSelf].
So this was the first time I was going to be taking on a full album for a while, and it was great getting Warne back in. Yeah, it was very easy. We picked up very quickly. He’s good to work with. He’s very meticulous. He’s a very good engineer, and as I like to co-produce rather than just be the sole producer, I like to co-produce with a very good engineer, because I like to have a creative foil and to bounce ideas back and forth. And we work well together. He’s good company, he’s a good guy, and he really enjoyed it. I think he had a really good time, and it was interesting blending within the band itself. Obviously, there’s members I’ve worked with for decades like James Ella, my longtime bass player who, in fact, was introduced to me by Warne. There’s DC Collard on keyboards, I’ve worked with for many years. Earl Harvin, the drummer, I’ve worked with him since 2000 and NakedSelf, and Barrie Cadogan is the newest member of the band who joined us for the Comeback Special, the tour that we did in 2018. It was a nice blend of new and old.
You appear in the video for “Cognitive Dissident,” and I have to ask, did you do so willingly? I just assumed that every artist from the MTV generation would rather have their teeth extracted at this point than shoot a video.
No, it was my suggestion to do it, because I was working with my old friend and collaborator, Tim Pope. And we’ve done many videos in the ‘80s, ‘90s, up to the naughty early noughties.
I know that name.
Yeah, yeah, so we’re we’re old friends. And so and I thought again, because it’s the first album in 25 years, and obviously, the budgets on videos are much smaller than they used to be. And I want to do smaller scale, which we filmed at my studio, the first two videos. [Note: the other video to which he’s referring is “Linoleum Smooth to the Stockinged Foot.”] And then we did a third video for “William Blake.” It was pretty straightforward, pretty painless. He’s quite a quick worker, so we did two videos on the first shoot at my studio. And then the second video was just like half a day or a day. So, it wasn’t too painful.
By the way, I felt [seen] when I first heard the line, “The unthinkable is now thinkable / The poison? It’s drinkable.” You cut straight to the heart of the Orwellian doublespeak that’s become far too normalized these days.
Yes, that’s what I wanted to do. And, in fact, with the album, the opening lines, I thought, ‘How can I sum up contemporary Britain in two words?’ And those two words were, “Servile, surveilled,” and that pretty much sums up where we are. It’s astonishing how we’ve slipped into this Orwellian dystopian situation, and it’s only going to increase, I suppose, despite all the warnings, most notably from Mr. Orwell himself.
Exactly.
Yeah, and it’s incredible how easily the population are cast under a spell by governments that lie all the time, and people will still trust the government, even though they continually lie to the population, abuse the population. And I wanted to make a comment on the restrictions of free speech, the censorship, the cancel culture, and I thought for me personally, the best way of doing it is through lyrics, and some people will pick up on it and get it, as you obviously did. Some people won’t necessarily pick up on it, but might like the music, anyway [Chuckles]. As Nina Simone once said, “It’s the duty of every artist to reflect the times they live in,” and that’s all I’ve tried to do through all my records. Obviously 2024 is a very different time to 1986. But there are certain similarities. And although the cast changes, the scenery changes, but the old story of the powerful abusing the less powerful is consistent throughout the ages, isn’t it?
I have a bit of an abstract question for you. I think about the multiverse a lot when it comes to lots of things, but mostly music. How many timelines do you think there are that have a version of The The that featured Johnny Marr from the beginning, and the Smiths never happened?
Ha! That’s interesting. I do happen to agree with the theory of the multiverse. I mean, we know that what we perceive through the five senses is minuscule to what’s really surrounding us, and that the human body is almost like a biological robot or virtual reality set, that’s just designed to allow this particular wavelength of reality in. And we are experiencing an infinitesimal amount of the energy that is the substance that’s around us. In terms of timelines splitting off, I do think there are an infinite number of coexisting universes that when we die we start working our way through, I imagine, depending on our state of mind, our state of soul and spirit. In terms of the timeline splitting off, though, that decisions that we made somehow carry on while we go in another direction, I’m not sure about that. It’s a fascinating idea, but it could still be a version of The The out there with Johnny.
After reading Johnny’s book. I was convinced that there have got to be at least a couple of [timelines], because he made it sound like he was really close to joining the band from the beginning.
Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah. And that’s why it was very natural, years later, when he left the Smiths, we met up again and sat up all night, and we both agreed it’d be great for him to be a part of the band, which, you know, he was a great, valued member of the band.
I have a funny story to tell you. About 20 years ago, when Sony reissued your catalog, I reviewed Soul Mining for a website. And in that review I made a joke about you stealing drum machines from the Human League, because whatever you used on “Giant” has to be the same thing that they used on “Don’t You Want Me” and “Love Action (I Believe in Love).” Am I right?
I’m not sure. It could have been. It could have been a Linn drum, something like that, I suppose, yeah.
But it was just a joke, but at one point, and I don’t know for how long, my review was cited as a source to a claim on Wikipedia that you actually stole the Human League’s drum machines.
[Amused] Really? Blimey. I’ve never read my Wikipedia page. That is funny! Did it eventually get removed [Laughs]?I looked it up right before you and I talked, and I’m not seeing it now, but I only looked on your side of things. Maybe it still shows up on the Human League’s side of things.
Oh, that is funny! The early drum machines, I still have some of them. [Mimics drum beat to “Giant”] that one, the “Giant” one, it could well have been a Linn drum, which were ubiquitous in those days. I suppose.
How did your recent tour of the US go?
Very, very well. In fact, the whole tour went very well. It was great audiences, the band played well, and we were doing two sets per night. We played Ensoulment in its entirety as the first set, it’s what we dubbed the Listening Set. We had a 15-minute intermission, and we came on and played what we dubbed the Retrospect Set, which obviously was songs throughout the catalogue, throughout my career, and then came off again, and then came back on at the end to do a short encore. But it went very, very well. Great audiences everywhere we went. Actually, the audience was fantastic.
That sounds amazing.
Yeah, it was a really successful tour, I mean. The only downer for me was in Philadelphia. I had a chest infection, and it meant I couldn’t sing as I would normally sing. You know what it’s like. You’re on tour, you’re traveling all the time, bugs go around, and I got affected by one for Philadelphia, which was a real shame. Because I obviously like to give 100% in every show that I do, if possible. And Philly, it was still a good show, but I wasn’t 100% happy with myself.
Well, hopefully, the Philly fans read this, and know that you send your regrets. “This is the Day” is now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thanks to its inclusion in “Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3.” So, two questions: have you seen the film, and has the song’s inclusion changed things for you in any way?
I have seen the film. I took my youngest son and his friends. He was 11 when the film came out, and it was fun to see it with the kids. No, it hasn’t changed anything for me. The song has always been my best-known song, and it’s been used in so many films, and adverts, and had cover versions done. So it’s not affected things, really.
I just wasn’t sure if there was, like, a bump in Spotify plays, or royalties.
Oh, I think there was. I think we probably had an extra million listeners or something like that. Yeah, there definitely was a bump for a while, and it’s good. I like the songs to be heard. I like them to be used. I like them to be out there. I like people to discover, hopefully through that song, then they discover the other songs as well, so I’m always happy when the songs are being used in new films. In fact, “Lonely Planet” was just used in Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film, “Megalopolis.”
That’s one of my favorite songs of yours, actually.
“Lonely Planet,” yeah, that gets used at the end credits, which was a nice, nice usage. And “This is the Day” was used in another British film recently. So yeah, this music does get used in a lot of films, which I’m happy about.
So what happens next? Has this album awakened a desire to make more music, or did this scratch an itch, and now you’re like, “No, I’m good”?
Yeah, I want to be doing [more]. There’s a couple of big projects on this year. We’re currently editing and mixing…we did a couple of shows at Sydney Opera House, and we made a live film, an album of those shows, so we’ve got to edit and mix that. I’ve just done the soundtrack to my brother Gerard’s new feature film, “Odyssey,” which is going to be world premiered at South by Southwest in, I think it’s in March, isn’t it? I’m recording a couple of singles this year, plus at the moment I’m working on a very large autobiographical book, a series of interviews, conversations with a good friend of mine, a writer called Jason Wood, who runs the British Film Institute in the UK. And these conversations have been done over a series of the last few years, so we’re at this stage where we’re about to start finishing that off for publication late this year, so there’s a lot of work this year, but in between that time, between all these projects, I need to find time to start writing. I’ve already, you know, started writing new songs. So that’s the plan.
One of my favorite things in doing this chat with you is hearing the distinction between your real-life speaking voice and your album speaking voice.
Ah. They sound different!
They do!
[Laughs] Yes, it’s usually the early hours of the morning that I’m up doing the speaking for the album, or late at night.And just to just to recap what you said earlier on, when you told me that “This is the Day” had been a pivotal song in some of your life experiences, and I was just thinking that as a songwriter, that is a one of the great rewards for me, aside from baubles and the trinkets of celebrity or critical reviews. But to have people bring my songs into their life, and to become part of the soundtrack of their life, and to accompany them in major events, whether it’s the birth of children, marriage, or even burying their loved ones – and I’ve received many letters over the years from that – it’s a real privilege for me, and it’s something I never get tired of hearing. I write the songs and record them, do the best I can, and send them out into the world, and you just hope that they all attach themselves to different people and to different circumstances. And it’s always a pleasure to know when the songs have meant something to people’s lives.
I appreciate you [repeating what you said earlier], knowing that we didn’t record that the first time. I think the reason that song resonates with so many people is because you were so young [when you wrote it], and yet have this worldly knowledge that is beyond your years. The line “All the money in the world couldn’t buy back those days,” that’s not something that most people in their early twenties have grasped yet. But you did.
Yeah, I don’t know where that came from, that [line]. And it’s funny enough. That song is still a comfortable song for me to sing live, because it means more and more with each passing year. Much of my immediate family – my mom, my dad, two of my brothers [Note: Johnson is clearly fighting back tears here] – have passed away, and they were very much in my mind and in my life, obviously, when I wrote that song. And so it does bring back memories for me, singing that song. Good memories.
Well, good. I’m glad I’m glad to hear that. Well, I’m sure you have a lot of other things to do, and unfortunately, I have to get back to my day job. But thank you again so much for agreeing to chat with me.
Thank you. I enjoyed it.
Cheers.
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