REVIEW: The The, Naked Self (Nothing)
- Michelle Aguilar
When I played this album in the living room, my roommate walked through at one point and said, "Man, Matt Johnson must have been really bummed out when Radiohead came out." While this album doesn't really sound like O.K. Computer, I knew what he meant.
Johnson has always been very good at making concept albums in disguise, taking one idea and exploring its depths through various perspectives and voicings. 1981's Soul Mining is of course the masterpiece everyone always brings up, but I see similar modes of attack on an album like 1988's Mind Bomb, which feels like the ravings of a man contemplating either suicide or a shooting spree or both. Even Hanky Panky -- which wasn't Johnson's songs -- managed to convey a unified sense of the anger and despair bubbling not far underneath Hank Williams' country pop songs.
Naked Self is yet another cohesive The The album that is just perfect for listening to in one shot, on headphones, in the dark. This time, Johnson's concept is the harsh, mechanical sounds of a city, (New York, London, wherever) with most everything recorded to sound like the cold metal sheen at the top of the Chrysler Building. The important exception is Johnson's acoustic guitar, a musical Travis Bickle standing at the center of a cold whirlwind, the only example of genuine warmth or passion operating in this environment full of numbed, damaged individuals. It's an important exception because Johnson's guitar and aching voice are what really cut through the big, harsh soundscape and draw the listener in to the simple songs underneath the eight million naked stories here.
"Boiling Point" starts us right off on a severe foot, opening the album with a single police siren that lasts a full 30 seconds then languishes its way into an slow, reverb-laden world of distorted electric guitar and metallic drums. It sounds like the "L" train emerging, agonizingly slowly, out of the underground and into the blinding heat of a summer day. I am reminded of the beautiful and sinister opening to Mind Bomb, which sparked to life with the sound of wailing Muslim prayers.
The strongest songs on this album are the snapshots of people in quiet crisis. "December Sunlight" is an uplifting guitar anthem for a sad-eyed woman, at the very moment she realizes that she's wasted half her l ife letting others make her miserable and that she doesn't need to waste the rest. Perhaps my surprise favorite was "Phantom Walls," a simple acoustic number that relies on the beauty of simplicity. Coming into the album ten songs deep, it's a refresher after the grimness that surrounds the previous songs.
"Voidy Numbness" is very catchy, poppy, with a mean rhythm section that keeps building up and down and back up again on its guitar riff. "The Whisperers" is quieter and brooding, a bit reminiscent of "Kingdom of Rain" from the Mind Bomb album. "Weather Belle," another good song, surprises with a repeated banjo riff, although the lyrics are familiar territory -- all about the last moment Johnson saw his love before it was taken away from him.
However, having just said that, it should be noted that most of the lyrics on this album are a departure from the intensely personal-sounding songs Johnson has written in the past. Most of these songs sound like they're about someone else, maybe friends, maybe strangers. Or maybe they're disguised versions of himself, who knows? But the first person perspective was always one of Johnson's strong suits and it's the one thing I really find myself missing here.
Still, the album's mission seems to be to tell stories of isolation, alienation, dysfunction and once in a while, hope. It succeeds at this quite well, surrounded by some of the warmest production Johnson has ever had.
