The The sounds as fresh as it did in the 1980s on new album Ensoulment

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The The Ensouled World Tour

When: Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Orpheum Theatre

Tickets and info: Ticketmaster.ca

English rock act The The was formed by Matt Johnson in 1979. Over the next decade, the project saw chart and sales success with albums such as its debut Soul Mining, Mind Bomb and Infected, and singles such as This is the Day and The Beat(en) Generation.

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Among the many former members was Johnny Marr, the guitarist of the Smiths, who joined the band from 1988 to 1994.

The only permanent member is Johnson, who has returned to recording with last month’s release of The The’s Ensoulment. This is the band’s first studio album after a 25-year hiatus. The record reached No. 7 in Official Charts Canada, top 20 in the U.K. and reached No. 24 on the Billboard current albums chart.

On the phone from his East London, England, home and studio space, Johnson summed up the reception to The The’s return following an ‘unusually long coffee break’.

“It’s a few months shy of a quarter century away, as I took a lot of time off living in different countries, having children, working on soundtracks and got involved in local East London politics,” said Johnson. “I spent seven years tackling specific issues in my borough around development, planning, licensing and fighting incompetence and worse on the part of local authorities. I also started a small books publishing company, so I’ve been busy.”

What he wasn’t doing during this time was writing or finishing part-penned songs. Ensoulment combines both new and long-waiting songs in a dozen concise tunes. One of these is the beautifully titled Some Days I Drink My Coffee By the Grave of William Blake. This autobiographical piece was nearly a dozen years in the making. The singer started it visiting Bunhill Fields, the Nonconformist burial ground in central London where Blake was interred in a pauper’s grave in 1827.

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“Honestly, I often do sit near the grave having a morning coffee, thinking and jotting down notes, and have done so since I was in my 20s,” he said. “So I had the title for the song for quite some time and it was very evocative to me as it was intriguing without being too suggestive. Ultimately, like a lot of the album, it’s a look at contemporary Britain.”

That Britain is the post-Brexit, post COVID-19, post successive failed Tory governments, economically stricken U.K. of today. Johnson likens it to the Britain he documented so well in Heartland, a grim portrait of a “decaying society in the dark days of Thatcherism” from 1986’s Infected. When he sings about the London he knew being long gone, he has everything from the raging gentrification of East London to the loss of places such as the Two Puddings in mind.

This legendary pub run by the singer’s late father Eddie Johnson was where such legendary acts as the Kinks and the Who played some of their earliest shows and also where the young Matt was first exposed to the transformative power of art.

“One of the things I was fighting during that period in local politics was to try to preserve old buildings and businesses and stop this tidal wave of corporate greed, spivs, chancers and opportunists turning the area into nothing but bars and nightclubs at the expense of the amenity of the local families,” he said. “The people that live and care about the area are being driven out and are opposing this situation, but the so-called public consultation process is a farce. The decisions are already made by council and corporate developers before any meetings are called.”

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Other songs on Ensoulment look at the transitory nature of human existence in both personal and universal ways.

From the touching Where Do We Go When We Die? written about his late father, Love is Stronger Than Death for his younger brother Eugene, Phantom Walls for his mother, and We Can’t Stop What’s Coming for his older brother Andrew Johnson, Johnson turns his pen to existential explorations of life and death. He does it without being morbid or overly melancholy. Ensoulment has light against the darkness.

Songs such as the touching ballad I Want to Wake Up With You and I Hope You Remember (The Things I Can’t Forget) celebrate life in often humorous ways. A lot of this is due to Johnson’s deep-voiced delivery of his literate lyrics juxtaposed against the excellent backing of band bassist James Eller, jazz drummer Earl Harvin, keyboardist D.C. Collard and crack lead guitarist Barrie Cadogan.

Cadogan, a regular in Paul Weller’s band, Primal Scream, and others also played guitar in the hit TV series Better Call Saul.

British/Canadian producer Warne Livesay, whose credits range from Midnight Oil and the Matthew Good Band to Vancouver’s No Sinner and Kandle, helmed Ensoulment. Livesay also worked on The The’s Infected and Mind Bomb.

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Johnson said having Livesay back was both a flashback and fast-forward experience as the politics of the day have come full circle in the ensuing decades.

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“There is a line in Kissing the Ring of POTUS about the ‘coup that nobody noticed,’ about the way this neo-Liberal/Conservative mentality infesting Western democracies gave us what I call the ‘extreme centre’,” he said. “A trick has been played on the public’s minds and it’s very sinister, where the neo-Liberal/neo-Conservative agenda that began in the Thatcher/Reagan years has now completely dominated the centre ground and has total control of the dialogue.”

Johnson says that this takeover has extended to contemporary arts and culture. The social mobility of the 1950s to 1970s that gave intelligent and creative lower working class to middle class artists an outlet has been largely reversed.

“I haven’t forgotten how lucky I was to come from the tail end of that incredible flourishing of the arts that enabled me to leave school at 15, go on the dole and work on my various bands before accomplishing something,” he said. “The song Down By the Frozen River looks at that life, which I fear has been closed off to all but those with wealthy parents, upper middle class status and connections.”

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Now that The The is back, he says to expect to hear more of his erudite and hooky pop music moving forward.

sderdeyn@postmedia.com

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