Customer Reviews

Nakedself

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Exactly one year after the albums release it's time for an unbiased review of NAKEDSELF.

Enjoying this album is dependent as to when you first heard the The.

Those fortunate to be in range of independent radio stations in the 80's heard 'Flesh and Bones' or 'Uncertain Smile'. This era of the The listeners will find NAKEDSELF mostly unpalatable.

In the 90's when all the independent stations were bought out by commercial conglomerates and boosted their range to 50+ watts. Suburbanite listeners were baptized and drilled with 'Dogs of Lust'. These fans will gravitate toward NAKEDSELF.

Ironically Matt's first song 'What Stanley Saw-1979' would fit nicely into NAKEDSELF. The lyrics are very strong especially 'December Sunlight' and 'Swine Fever'. The disapproving old fan should set this album aside and let it age like fine wine to enjoy later (hey we're all in our 30's now).

With such a diverse and brilliant career we should appreciate Matt's ability to grow and not stagnate like his post-punk peers. Most of them couldn't make it past 1989.

Truly long awaited emergence of the band and the music. For the most fans, rating this album is not important (but for review here, of course it will only be 5 stars). Listening to this album makes me think and realize Matt Johnson is undoubtedly one of the greatest songwriters, he writes like nobody else does. With new musical style, Nakedself becomes fresh reincarnation from Dusk and Mind Bomb.

As a long standing fan, i awaited this release with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation, all too aware of the black hole of mediocrity that many artists past their prime tumble into.

Happily, its not the case with Naked Self...to a point. While Matt Johnson retains his penchant for sharing personal life lessons learned(see the record title for a huge hint), I felt the record did lose something from the subtle genius of Dusk. Credit him for moving in new directions, but i have to admit i miss the unmistakeable contributions of a certain johnny marr, who in many ways seemed the perfect foil for johnson's angst ridden offerings.

welcome back.

NakedSelf is a great record. My personal favorites have always been Mind Bomb (lush, orchestral, poetic and political) and Dusk (soooo sad and soulful). NakedSelf is both immediately impressive and yet leaves room to grow on you. The music lacks the richness of MindBomb, but is beautiful in its acoustic, bare-bones style. Matt's lyrics are unpretentious, and seem to have retained a fondness for Hank Williams Sr's simplicity. In a word...mature.

... repeating all of the kudos everyone here has stated; I certainly count myself amongst the ranks of those who consider Johnson to be one of the planet's greatest living musicians / lyricists, and an amazingly undercelebrated talent for the time he's been around (as someone already mentioned, a lot of us would rather not share his genius to keep his amazing gift within our 'circle'). Suffice to say, no one really captures the pathos of the human condition in such a beautifully orchestrated manner as well as Johnson does. I've only listened to this album a handful of times - so perhaps the 5 star rating is a bit premature, as not every song is an instant classic... but, a few of them (ShrunkenMan, GlobalEyes, SwineFever, among others) I've already recognized as being wonderfully close to perfection - sending that ferris wheel inside my cranium spinning wildly. On par with (or better than) anything he's previously accomplished, musically.

I usually lurk & only READ these amazon reviews, but this album has sparked me in such a way that I felt compelled to write. So, I hope that more people will be persuaded to pick this up and enjoy it.

Matt Johnson, in his typical ascerbic manner, wanders through the human psyche. From "The Whisperers":
"lying in her birthday suit,
and listening to the bickering from the room upstairs,
and wondering if its fear of loneliness or love,
that keeps people together"
and
"don't be sad when people you trust stab you in the back"
The lyrics are superb as Johnson trawls the meaning of love, loneliness, beauty, death, fate, the impacts of globalisation etc. And the music compliments the lyrical themes wonderfully. The tracks are heavily guitar driven with Eric Schermerhorn displaying his skills excellently and brings a more distorted riff driven feel to the album. This wall of sound compliments the more accessible melodic tracks. For a newcomer to the The The catalogue you might find Infected or Mindbomb more accessible or even the singles collection 45RPM. But it is an excellent album worthy of atleast a listen. If you like your music dwelling on the darker side of humanity then this is for you. 100% Recommended.

Matt Johnson will forever be remembered in the annals of rock for releasing the first great album of the new (de facto) millennium. Over the past 20 years, Johnson has consistently, if not exactly prolifically, released the best albums of their class. Soul Mining and Infected are still the best synthpop albums of the 80s, Mind Bomb and Dusk both loom over all other pop-rock compositions of the last two decades, and Hanky Panky will, in time, come to be understood as the heartfelt and beautiful paean to Hank Williams' ouevre. And now, we have NakedSelf, an album so defiantly iconoclastic it dares to wedge a beautiful, banjo-driven love song between an avant noise-pop piece and the best metal song ever to actually feature intelligent lyrics. The album is introspective and yet hisses and spits with the bile that can only come with an aquaintance with our fair country's urban centers. Nowhere is this vitriol more apparent than on "SwineFever," the ironically titled polemic declaiming the manifold vices of consumerism, which is backed by Earl Harvin's monstrous slab of rhythm section. The high point of the album, however, comes early, with the tender "TheWhisperers," which is lyrically reminiscent of some of Infected's finest tunes. Johnson has once again provided the public with a view into his most personal self, peeling back layers of cynicism and irony to reveal the naked self that twists and writhes within us all.

This is VERY good. The first 4 songs r just UNBELIEVABLY perfect and I would have given it 5 stars if the rest of the album was as brilliant. the other songs r good but not PERFECT like the first 4. I also likethe artwork.

Make no mistake, this is one DARK album! Having followed The The from their early days in the 1980s through to their last release several years ago, it came as quite a surprise to hear this album. Not quite what you'd call a triumphant comeback, more of an update on Matt Johnson's ever-downbeat state of mind (a situation which, in the past, has given rise to some of the 80's and 90's finest music). Struggles with paranoia, depression and addictions have made themselves evident on Naked Self in the sparseness of the production and the lack of accessibility (you won't find anything approaching a single anywhere here).

However, repeated listenings open up the door a little and show that, if nothing else, Matt Johnson is a true original and ought to be praised for his uncompromising approach, particularly after being dropped by his previous record company and left to fend for himself. I expect further listens to bring increasing rewards and, who knows, maybe I'll end up thinking this is the best album he's ever done. However, for his next project, Matt should consider making something a little more upbeat or accessible (which is not to say mainstream), lest he repels even his die-hard fans. the previous The The album (discounting the Hanky Panky experiment) - released in 1996 - was called Dusk. I suppose it's only fitting that Dusk should be followed by such darkness. And after the darkness, what next? Let us await the dawn of a new day for The The

I first stumbled onto The The after checking out their section on the Nothing Records website (home of The The and my favorite band, NIN), and downloading Saltwater off of The The's website. If you're already a fan of industrial music (IE, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, or Marilyn Manson), you pretty much know what to expect. However, I'm new to The The, so I didn't know what to expect. You'll have to listen to this CD at least 4 or 5 times to get Matt Johnson's true genius.

Anyway, This is another of those CDs, like NIN's The Fragile, where you really can't listen to one song at a time, you have to listen to the whole thing. It is really brilliant, though. There's almost no use of the word that rhymes with "duck", and each song is almost nothing like the next. I really cant describe the songs on the CD, but Shrunkenman, Boiling Point, Saltwater, Diesel Breeze, and Swine Fever are the best songs on the CD, but, like I said, you'll have to listen to the CD as a whole in order to understand it.

If you've already listened to Industrial rock bands like NIN, Manson, The Cure, etc., you'll have to be sure to check this one out. If you haven't, then, you should check out one of the other bands I mentioned before getting into The The. I'm definately going to check out The The's other works.