The The have thrilled fans with the announcement of their first studio album of all new material in almost a quarter of a century. The 12-track album Ensoulment will be released on 6 September and features the same incarnation of the Matt Johnson-fronted band that formed for 2018’s string of live comeback dates including Primal Scream collaborator Barrie Cadogan on lead guitar.
Written, demoed and mixed at Studio Cinéola in London as well as a further six-day session at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios near Bath, the album also marks the return of co-producer and engineer Warne Livesey, who previously worked on landmark The The LPs Infected in 1986 and 1989’s Mind Bomb.
Having last released a studio album in 2000 with the NakedSelf LP, Johnson’s lengthy absence was partly explained in his 2017 multimedia project, The Inertia Variations which took inspiration from British poet John Tottenham’s 2005 book of the same name – particularly the idea of “brooding, abstraction and evasion” getting in the way of the creative process – resulting in a feature-length documentary and the Radio Cinéola Trilogy boxset.
At the close of The Inertia Variations documentary, Johnson performs a new song live, We Can’t Stop What’s Coming. The track is an elegy to his elder brother Andrew (aka Andy Dog), who died in 2016. “It was not an easy song to write,” Matt says. “That was the first time I’d sung in many years. I enjoyed it but found it very emotional.”
The experience prompted Johnson to revive The The as a live band, leading to The Comeback Special sold out world tour of 2018. Covid delayed the release of the accompanying live film and LP until 2021 – and hampered the intended start on the writing and recording of Ensoulment. Instead, The The released a series of 7" singles comprising the a
