Description:
Hell on earth, mate? What The The's founder doesn't know about it isn't worth recording: "They piss'n'moan / And push'n'shove / So below / As it is above". It's been a decade since Matt Johnson's last "proper" album and a good few since he decamped to the same USA that loomed balefully over a fearful Britain in his brilliant, dystopian Infected. He may be nearly 40, the age at which nihilist peer Nick Cave produced a work of redemptive humility in The Boatman's Call, but Johnson's ruthless new album suggests that even if they'd shut down every balefulness pit in England in the years since he was but a precoci
Hell on earth, mate? What The The's founder doesn't know about it isn't worth recording: "They piss'n'moan / And push'n'shove / So below / As it is above". It's been a decade since Matt Johnson's last "proper" album and a good few since he decamped to the same USA that loomed balefully over a fearful Britain in his brilliant, dystopian Infected. He may be nearly 40, the age at which nihilist peer Nick Cave produced a work of redemptive humility in The Boatman's Call, but Johnson's ruthless new album suggests that even if they'd shut down every balefulness pit in England in the years since he was but a precocious young one-Cockney band, he'd still be producing enough to ship it back here by the, erm, baleful. Spartan in arrangement but darkly claustrophobic as ever, Naked Self draws on Johnson's insinuating vocals and the provocation of exaggeratedly menacing titles ("Voidy Numbness", "Swine Fever"), deliberately clunking lines about "Kentucky fried genocide" ("Global Eyes") and ambiguous exhortations to "hey, embrace your pain" ("Phantom Walls"). Indeed, despair casts a such a long shadow that it's startling to realise that, from the acoustic-strummed, lazily pretty "Soul Catcher" and "The Whisperers" to a deceptively tender-sounding "Weather Belle", there's frequently as much beauty as bile here. But, like those American breakfasts, the bile always seems to come in bigger portions. --Jennifer Nine
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Manufacturer: Polydor
Release date: 28 February 2000
Number of discs: 1
EAN: 0606949051020 UPC: 606949051020
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