ONCE MORE INTO ABYSS

Craig S. Semon - SUNDAY TELEGRAM - 2000


Before there was Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, there was Matt Johnson and The The. Long before Reznor ever dreamt up his ‘Pretty Hate Machine’ Johnson was already carving a nihilistic niche with 1982’s ‘The Pornography Of Despair’.

Johnson has been credited as a major NIN influence.  So it seems only appropriate that 20 years after The The’s conception that Johnson finds new creative life on Reznor’s Nothing Records.  The The and Nine Inch Nails have a lot in common.  Both bands are essentially one-man projects, specializing in staring into the abyss and examining the emptiness of human existence.

Unless you count 1997’s ‘Gun Sluts’ – which Johnson’s former label (Epic/Sony) refused to release because of a lack of potential commercial singles – ‘NakedSelf’ is The The’s first album or original material in seven years.  On ‘NakedSelf’, Johnson still reigns in a ‘Kingdom Of Rain’, as he did on the 1989 single of the same name (a duet with Sinead O’Connor) and still does some serious soul mining.

This time around, the 39 year old British Brooder (who works with a rotating set of musicians) finds himself surrounded by guitarist Eric Schermerhorn (ex-Iggy Pop’s band), drummer Earl Harvin (ex-MC900 Foot Jesus) and bassist Spencer Campbell (ex-Kenny Rogers’ band; yes, really).  The latest incarnation of The The performers April 28th at the Avalon in Boston.
 
Observing the everyday rat race, Johnson takes a subway ride home and notices that the city’s occupants closer resemble vermin than people on ‘Boiling Point’. On this disquieting ditty, The The creates a nihilistic version of metropolitan life, where street encounters and public transit use are met with dead, frozen stares and chilling words of disgust.  After a hellish instrumental that would be at home on any NIN record, Johnson has what sounds like an unnerving call-and-response session with his inner voice.

And the thing that seems to trouble Johnson most throughout the record is that he still has a soul in a city that sucks life out of its inhabitants. It’s difficult to conclude if Johnson’s a man who’s about to snap or to give up at any time.  In an attempt to reach out for some fleeting, human contact, Johnson offers icy, idle chit-chat on spirituality, superficiality, solitude and an on-coming storm.  In the end of’BoilingPoint’, the disillusioned Johnson practically wants to roll over and play dead.  Then again, he might not be playing at all but playing for keeps.

 Johnson offers a harsh Morrissey – like lesson on life to a woman verbally ripped apart and emotionally beaten on ‘The Whisperer’.  The listener finds the song’s female protagonist sprawled naked on the floor, sniffling, smoking cigarettes and hoping for a phone call that will never come.   With funky guitar riffs and incessant bass line, the song’s melody sounds bouncy and breezy (in spite of Johnson’s harsh words) but still sounds dark around the edges.  In the chorus,  Johnson sings in painfully delicate falsetto, ‘Don’t get sad/When people that you trust stab you in the back/So you thought they were your friends/Now you know/There’s one thing in life that holds/You’re on your own.’

Showing that he’s a softee when it comes to romance, ‘December Sunlight’  boasts Johnson’s most tender singing and some of the album’s best poetry.  In this positive tune, a woman wipes her tears, picks up the pieces and plans to move on with (gasp!) a positive outlook.  A hearty, hook-laden melody of fuzzy electric chords and clear acoustic guitar strums further fleshes out the song’s positive vibe.  Sounding a little bit like British pinup Robbie Williams, Johnson sings, ‘…she feels alive/And wants to drink every kiss/Make up for what she’s missed/And wipe him out of her mind.’
Johnson comes up with the notion that the living, breathing essence of pain watches over us in our most desperate hours in ‘PhantomWalls’.  In Johnson’s mind, pain is an old friend that one should embrace because, unlike love, it’s honest and intentions are upfront.  Johnson’s warm, cushiony voice and peaceful, acoustic guitar strums accent this somber ode to the soothing powers that pain sometimes offers.  Sounding like he’s giving pain personified a character referral, Johnson sings, ‘It’s pain that stops the heart from hating/That cures the mind of hesitating/That  helps the soul in separating/From everything that it’s been blaming/Everything’s changing.’
Personal crisis and emotional upheaval have never sounded so appealing as they do here.