Review Summary: After 40 years since its release, "Soul Mining" still shows an ageless fusion between mainstream pop-rock and post-punk sensibilities.
Before I listened to two of Matt Johnson's widely accomplished masterworks, "Soul Mining" and "Infected", I thought he played a kind of noise rock with post-punk vibes. Because of their artwork, I imagined his music dissonant and ambiguous, with shocking lyrics punctuated by a heavy delivery. Instead, I received two albums of greatly crafted college pop with new wave vibes—not necessarily noisy and radical, but full of attitude and meticulosity. Although, at their core, both records are conceived for the mainstream public, they possess an air of exclusivity that differs from other new-wave-tinged releases. Furthermore, they miss the conventional character, being merely author records, touched by Johnson's provocative mystique.
Even if "Infected" appears more mature than "Soul Mining", the latter shows Johnson's conception at the peak of melodicity and instrumental virtuosity. It remains a manifesto in pop structure and, different from its more homogenous successor, presents a majestic suite of styles, all connected with a playful post-punk sensibility. Beneath the new-wave surface, there are blues-rock, jazz, and even native-American folklore echoes, which make the album a varied affirmation of an eclectic musical decade. From the cover, representing a skinny New Orleans lady, to the highly emotive lyrics, the record stands as a foray into modern life’s essence, aided by deceitful optimism.
“Soul Mining” was originally intended to feel like a transparent work of art that searches for substance in a wide array of styles and sonorities. It intends to give the listeners a masterfully conceived façade to these stylistic explorations. Like the band’s name, which is a metaphor for the generic character, The The wants to surprise the floating essence that lies at the surface of all these musical touches without digging too deeply into their logic. It surprises just a bit of their essence, preserving that superfluous character retrieved in the most representative pop releases. Unlike their contemporaries who delivered significantly politically charged lyrics, The The just gives a broad impression of what happens on the world scene without giving names of leaders and regimes, without appealing to a shock value political ideology.
So, in the song “The Sinking Feeling," the political décor is analyzed from an individual and compelling human point of view. With a pacifist message hidden beneath the fearful political and psychological metaphors, “The Sinking Feeling" shows the best The The’s lyrical creed: “Death is not the answer for life’s suffering, so we must fight our inner demons, and even if today feels like a defeat, tomorrow we will have another chance to beat the disturbing memories and violent challenges of everyday life." The song combines the individual and the social, the spirit and the state in a dark scream of painful fight. It crosses the line traced between new wave's energy and post-punk’s gloom, projecting cryptic messages into mainstream.
That was Matt Johnson’s mission—to deliver a mainstream interpretation of the underground conceptions of post-punk and gothic. That makes his body of work an abrasive pop-rock labyrinth, distressingly groovy, and strangely danceable. This attitude is evidenced more cohesively in “Uncertain Smile," an optimistic moment touched by a harmonious new wave presence. It is interrupted by a blues-rock piano solo, which sounds very detached from 80s modernism, enriching the texture with an old-school approach and treating it with a contemporary interpretation. Maybe “Soul Mining” is the key post-modernist album of the first half of the eighties. It feels like a free-form experiment in styles and keeps an ironic excitement.
Seductive, both cool and nerd-friendly due to its elevated texture, “Soul Mining” stands as a highly original mosaique composed of both mainstream and underground sonorities, full of sardonic charm. An acid soundtrack to a troubled age and a troubled era...
