Matt Johnson (The The) - Burning Blue Soul
#446
by Brian Kushnir
September 7 1981
Matt Johnson (The The)
Burning Blue Soul
Genre: Troubled Experimental Post-Blues
Allen’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Brian's Rating: 3.75 out of 5
Highlights:
Red Cinders in the Sand
TIme Again for the Golden Sunset
Icing Up
Like a Sun Risin Thru My Garden
This is an origin story. The the prequel, because most people would come to The The via “Soul Mining” or a later release first. Originally released with a different cover under his own name on 4AD in 1981, this is the debut LP from 20 year old Matt Johnson, who’s “Burning Blue Soul” is like a view from inside someone’s head as they watch the Hindenburg go down. It's impressive and disturbing, something you can’t look at too long or too often. This is the nucleus, the kernel of The The before you add the more palatable sugary coating of pop gloss that folks like Jools Holland and Johnny Marr brought in. Influenced by John Lennon but not the clever Beatle John the tormented one who wailed about all that drags him and Yoko down and there was a lot. Burning Blue Soul is foreshadowing everything that was to come and has come and is here now. Alienation. Numbing crowds. A post-industrial shocked wasteland of nihilism and insecurity and oh what’s the use. It’s a deep, dark night of the soul and Matt Johnson gets down on tape what’s in his head, singing and making most of the sounds.
Burning Blue Soul was boundary pushing for its time and still sounds avant and interesting: tape loops, musique concrete, muted tribal drums, submarine sounds… distorted, occasionally off-kilter voices with hard to catch words, there’s a recognizable beat there like you’re outside a rocking club but maybe you're actually just floating in the river and didn’t know how you got here except that you dropped the needle on this. Arpeggiated guitar. Bagpipes. A bongo drum loop with seagull sounds throughout, drenched (oh must it always be drenched!) in reverb, ok well slathered in reverb, and echo, and someone is kicking in the guitar amp, and finally a bass starts to really tie the room together. Fog Horns! Maybe we’re at the shore. Bristol? Layered, pulsing beats. Reverb-amp explosions in time.
And that’s just the opening track!
This is the kind of dark into which people who feel alone in this world may want to walk toward. ‘This artist gets me, they see me, they are putting my feelings into words.’
Some songs work better than others, with gentle, memorable melodies, or a turn of a phrase that sticks with you. “Time Again For The Golden Sunset” opens with wobbly bass and echoed out guitar, and Johnson sings quietly, naively, with close in doubled-up vocal, occasionally conjuring a feeling of tortured anger. Johnson is showing his Residents' influence a bit. He may be in his bed, under the covers. The verbally dexterous Johnson is deadpan and dark:
“I used to be indecisive,
But now I’m not so sure.”
He mixes a dubbed out almost steel drum interlude with this commentary on his state of mind:
“I find it hard to come alive
When I’m all hollowed out
From the inside”
“Icing Up” is peak 1981 Johnson. Slow, reverby drum loops then guitar strums as if by random stumbling into the type of layered, chorus-driven guitar and synth progression that Johnny Marr, who was later in The The, may have himself actually been influenced by. A short, characteristically downbeat sing-song verse: “I have no future for I’ve had no past, just sitting here, pulling arrows, from my heart” (as one does), is followed by a positively psycho multi-tracked home studio jam session, replete with backwards guitars, synths floating in from right to left, and even a guitar solo where Johnson plucks out a nod to Jimi Hendrix.
Later in the record Johnson takes the piss out of “Dancing in The Streets,” by singing “Summer’s here…but I hardly noticed, there’s no reason to be singing.” This is no future music made for people anticipating their imminent annihilation. It’s chilling, heady, and still relevant.
https://open.spotify.com/album/4mwZ8nCDkOE4FB0TKHaWwl?si=Tt54OuZ6QC2gPshGy25cSQ
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