Live Review – The The – London Brixton Academy, 01/10/24
Time for your enrolment in Ensoulment
“Here comes another winter of long shadows and high hopes…”
Matt Johnson’s words to The The’s ‘Heartland’ were penned in the middle of the 1980s, but with their talk of pensioners being dumped on by government, crumbling cinemas, wars on the television and the yawning gap between rich and poor, they could just as easily have been written about the last few months. “This is,” after all, as he sings in the track, “the land where nothing changes.”
It also explains why Johnson feels the need to set the record straight regarding the potentially nostalgic nature of the evening’s entertainment. Any mention of the 1980s during the evening instantly gets a huge cheer from the sold out crowd – understandably, since the band’s two biggest albums Soul Mining and Infected are from ‘83 and ‘86 respectively. But it prompts Johnson to speak out, eventually, declaring that he’d loved the 60s because he’d been a boy, the 70s as he’d been a teenager, but the 80s… “I just couldn’t wait to get out of them.”
One surefire way of avoiding the n-word is, of course, to do precisely what Johnson and co do tonight and open the two part show with your just-released new album. In lesser hands it would be self-indulgence personified, but luckily Ensoulment is enthralling and understated, well worth the 25-year gap it has taken to emerge – provided you don’t count the instrumental and soundtrack work he’s been busy making.
Tracks like ‘Kissing The Ring of Potus’ – about despotic dictators who lie, charm and seduce their way into power – through to the more philosophical ‘Where Do We Go When We Die?’ and the ¾ sway of ‘Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake’, it’s full of highlights. Some fans have subsequently complained of audience members talking through this section, but from where this reviewer was standing – half way back, stage right, in the stalls for the record – it feels like this section holds the crowd suspended in reverent, rapt attention throughout.
That said, things do liven up considerably after the short interval, not only among the audience, which begins to behave more like a sellout crowd watching their favourite band from practically the first note of ‘Infected’, but also Johnson himself. For someone deemed to be an almost reclusive character, it’s amazing – in all the right ways – to witness him stepping out of the shadows to address the front rows and joke away in a genial manner. “They’re serving drinks down here,” he says, indicating to security handing out water to the faithful at the very front, “looks like vodka, it’s outrageous!”
At least part of that confidence must be down to his band of James Eller (bass), DC Collard (keyboards), Chris Whitten (drums) and Barrie Cadogan (lead guitar), now well bedded in and handling duties with skill and well-chosen moments of flair. Pretty sure, for example, not many audiences have ever gone as bananas for a piano solo as they do when Collard recreates Jools Holland’s extended tinkling at the end of first encore ‘Uncertain Smile’. Likewise, Whitten handles the tribal percussive workout at the end of the evening’s conclusion, a triumphant rendition of ‘Giant’, with just the kind of mixture of precision and hooligan battery that the moment calls for.
Other highlights? An exultant rendition of ‘The Day’, beautifully optimistic and uplifting among the darker moods of many of the other songs. A spiky ‘Dogs of Lust’ complete with wailing harmonica and a swagger that’s half blues slide, half glam stomp and – from the first half – the lilting ‘I Want To Wake Up With You’, as moving and captivating as anything played tonight.
True, it’s depressing that so many of the themes, from evangelical Christian madness to social injustice remain crushingly present in our lives. “This decade is definitely the weirdest one yet,” Johnson declares as the last word on the decade debate, before suggesting we “just try to be kind.” Just as relevant as he was four decades back, if not more so, the return of Matt Johnson in 2024 on the other hand… That makes perfect, glorious sense.
Ben Willmott