Customer Reviews

Soul Mining

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This was definitely my all time favorite album of the early 80's & I was ecstatic when it was issued on CD & included "Perfect" as a bonus track...however this re-issue is a pathetic, money -grabbing, resource-wasting exercise. Time has not been good to Matt Johnson's sense of judgement. Not only are there no bonus tracks, but one of the tracks is removed for the reissue? That's almost as bad as the Peter Gabriel reissues (deleting material from the live 2 CD set to fit it on 1 CD). You can still find the original in bargain bins & since it still has "Perfect" on it, it is superior to this reissue. The original US CD was perfect with "Perfect" & what could have made this an even better issue is the inclusion of 12" versions & b-sides from the singles. (It's true the bonus disc on the greatest hits 2CD set included a few, but when a CD can hold 80 minutes of music, it's really inexcusable not to fill it up when there is plenty of unreleased material that people want on CD). Will the UK 12" mix of Perfect ever make it to CD? or the 3 Orange Kisses from Kazan? Waiting for the Upturn?....I guess I should finally hook up my record player to my computer, extract the original US CD, record the vinyl singles of the same period & burn my own CD, because as long as it's in Matt's hands, it won't see the light of day. :(

Matt Johnson, the principal and essential part of The The, is not well known. That's a shame really, because in Soul Mining he has created perhaps the best rock album of all time. The introspective, often dark lyrics put Morrissey to shame. The deceptively simple music that backs it up is filled with enough pop hooks to make it instantly recognizable. And it stands the test of time, sounding as fresh and relevant today as it did when released going on 20 years ago. Perfect and This is the Day are, in my mind, the standout cuts on the album, but you'll want to really listen to this CD several times to appreciate all that it has to offer. If you like The Smiths, earlier Depeche Mode, or just wildly intelligent, deeply personal, and ofttimes moving alternative rock you owe it to yourself to check out The The.

Soul Mining was my favourite album going through college when it originally came out. I grew up with it. I made love to it. I broke up with it. I cried with it. I took drugs with it. I got drunk with it. I passed so many rites of passage with it it became a very close personal friend. Over the years we lost touch with each other. But then I found out it was re-issued and BOY what a beautiful job they have made of it. It sounds even better than I remember. The mastering of this re-issue is absolutely superb. I also read somewhere that this is how Matt Johnson had originally intended the album to sound. That some A&R jerk at his US record company had just stuck on the 12" version of Perfect for the US release without even asking MJ's permission!!! Well, he's finally got his own way with this wonderful re-issue. I could not recommend highly enough that you add this essential album to your collection. One of the truly greatest albums of the 1980's by one of Britain's greatest ever singer/songwriters.

The original Soul Mining was a double cassette. Fans back then
who couldn't get this rarity would pick up some of the missing
songs on 12" releases or CD singles. If this album were released
now in it's entirety, It would easily be considered his all time best!
The whole second side is like an odd mirror of the first.
The original tracks were:

I've Been Waitin' For Tomorrow (All Of My Life), This Is The Day,
The Sinking Feeling, Uncertain Smile, The Twilight Hour, Soul Mining,
Giant, Perfect, Three Orange Kisses From Kazan, Nature Of Virtue,
Mental Healing Process, Waitin' For the Upturn, Fruit of the Heart

Three Orange kisses just takes you way below the subdermal of
that skin Matt talks about in Uncertain smile. Mental Healing Process
is a wonderful happy sad tune, all in all a more personal level of
depth to a more mainstream first side. Add his 1984 single "Flesh
& Bones" (the song he played as an encore on the Mind Bomb tour) and
you would have a masterpiece.

Not too economical back then for a double cassette but would have
been entirely appropriate for an "original recording remaster" now.
Like some of the other reviewers I'll stick with my UK version
with the woman on the cover by Andy Dog. Being a fan of MJ is
a bit frustrating because of all the down time between label
switches but the Epic/Columbia years were above the rest in
scope and scale.

Soul Mining was heavily influenced by what was contemporary dance music in 1983. In fact, it second-guessed much of what came a little bit later - the drums in "The Twilight Hour" and "GIANT" sound quite similar to those in New Order's stellar dance single "The Perfect Kiss," but Soul Mining predates Low-life by two years. The The's first album uses the sounds of dance music, but is really not danceable at all - the drums are oppressively loud, or so over-processed as to lose all spontaneity, the atmosphere is uncomfortably claustrophobic, and of course, Matt Johnson's snarls and falsettoes put to rest the last shred of anyone's desire to dance. In effect, Soul Mining is dance music made by someone who doesn't dance, can't dance, hates dancing, and casts hateful and longing glances at the pretty and vacuous girls who dance with carnal abandon at the clubs. It's also probably the best debut album of its decade.

It's not the music that carries the album. There are many quite catchy hooks, but they sound as oddly jarring as one would expect from a dance album made in solitude about solitude. It has to be Johnson's voice that makes the album what it is - that unflagging, unyielding directness, honest anxiety and fear and withdrawn, reticent anger. Some of these songs - actually, all of them - are about the woman who done Johnson wrong, but there's none of the goths' preferred self-exonerating moping going on here. The first song, "I've Been Waiting For Tomorrow All of My Life" is Johnson's ultimatum to himself: "Another year older, and what have I done? My aspirations have shrivelled in the sun, I'm crippled by guilt, blinded by lies, I've been waiting for tomorrow all of my life!"

Soul Mining uses a narrative technique that Johnson wouldn't employ again, namely the second person. Three songs here are addressed to "you," though Johnson is clearly referring to himself. This underscores the album's self-confrontational and self-accusatory nature. "This is the Day," a somewhat upbeat tune that actually owes more to blues than to dance, is actually a portrait of dead-end nowheretown despair, in which the protagonist (Johnson), suffering from insomnia and terminal nostalgia, opens a window and sees that the day outside that he has alienated himself from is so beautiful that he can't help but think that it will bring some kind of change into his life, though no source of change is to be seen anywhere. Less subtle is "The Twilight Hour," a depiction of self-induced emotional slavery in the worst stage. Johnson seethes with venom towards his own spineless conduct - "You were emotionally independent, but starved of affection, so now you've been trapped by tenderness and beaten into submission" - and ends with a line of devastating irony: "You're relying on her for your independence."

The title track explores much the same territory using spooky metaphors of floating down tunnels that fit the weird, wispy music flawlessly, but losing no directness in the process - "You've been read like an open book, page by page. You'll never tell anyone your inner thoughts again. You've been taken in by a heart of fool's gold, now you're drifting in circles in the depths of your soul." On the last line, Johnson's soft singing turns to a snarl, as if to show that the conclusion was well-deserved. The chorus is the album's one big sing-along moment - "Something always goes wrong when things are going right..."

"Uncertain Smile" lacks the anger of the others; it's a sweet jangle pop song about first love from the perspective of the absurd boy who later made Soul Mining. It features the musical highlight of the album, Jools Holland's wonderful jazz-piano solo. The song only shows Johnson's youth at that time - after all, that's when one's worldview is more black and white, one's expectations of oneself are higher, one's emotions are sharper, and one throws all the intensity one has into one's experiences. This gives Soul Mining an air of a kind of innocent naivete, despite all the anger flying around.

"GIANT" is one of pop music's weirdest images, due to the sheer incongruity of Johnson's tortured lyric with the odd music. The arid drums and bass suggest a torrid desert, an image that pops up in Johnson's first lines, and the little musical phrase that comes in after a couple minutes evokes no image so much as that of a little devil playing a xylophone with great gusto and abandon, shaking his head amusingly to the tune while Johnson sits helpless on his chair. Then, when the pounding tribal beat drowns out the little devil, there's a sepulchral chorus of big dancing devils, who have joined hands in a circle and are now prancing around Johnson as the whole scene recedes into the distance.

It's a bizarre image to close with, and close the album it does, now that "Perfect" is no longer the final track. It's available on the greatest hits compilation 45 RPM, but Johnson decided to excise it from the reissue of Soul Mining. While "GIANT" does make the better ending, "Perfect" is a great song in itself, a variation on the themes of Soul Mining in which Johnson is a little more cynical and irritated than usual, but still far from malicious. (Naturally, it's married to some upbeat harmonica figures.) Later, Johnson got older but not much happier; fortunately, The The's steadfast humanity, and the honesty, intelligence and understanding in The The's words and music, only increased with time.

This album is one of the best of the eighties. And it's newly remastered form is long overdue. The original album( at least it's U.S. release) had eight songs. This has been scaled down to seven. "Perfect" is the missing song, and it is sorely missed. It was a "perfect" ending to this album. I would have given this album 5-stars, but I had to deduct points for the missing song.

Ultimately this is a response to ChrisWN of santa cruz, siting this reissue as faulty, a waste of time because of a lack of bonus material. I would contest this for a number of reasons. True, this CD is missing the track "Perfect" which ended the 1990 CD version, but it was not originally intended to be on the record anyway. If you take a look at the original vinyl release you will notice this. Beyond that minor difference, I am excited to have a reissue that doesn't simply stack on bonus cuts for the sake of filling the disc. It is a rarity to have actual worthwhile material at the end of these remasters that have been ever so popular the last 10 years at least. Granted, it can be a treat to hear a gem of a live recording, or a studio demo significantly different from the final take (like The Glove bonus disc or The Byrds' "Sweetheart of the Rodeo"), but generally there is a very good reason that stuff was "never before released until now!". The sound quality stinks, the playing is off, etc. So let's put it this way; if you have the original vinyl or CD release of this album, it's probably not worth buying this just for the cleaned up sound quality. If you haven't got a copy, go for this! Clean sound, no wasted space. Just the album as it was intended for a proper price. There ya go!

What the (the)? I get all happy that one of my all-time favorite albums has been remastered, so even though I already own the original CD, I purchase the reissue. However, when I pop it into the CD player I realize it's missing the BEST SONG! Sure, "This is the Day" and "Uncertain Smile" are incredible, but they can't match "Perfect." It's, well, perfect. The fact that it didn't make it onto the reissue isn't just too bad, it totally ruins it for me. I feel cheated out of my favorite The The song. Guess it's back to the old CD....

It's a shame that they didn't include both versions of "Perfect" with this "re-mastered" and they didn't include Matt Johnson's brother Andrew's original artwork. This is all classic stuff that helped everyone break the envelope.
Wouldn't a final CD version containing all the artwork and all the songs be even greater than just the songs? Maybe a boxed ste with DVDs.
Anyway, if you're at all interested in the The, this is the best.
That mind-blowing piano solo in "Uncertain Smile" always gets peoples attention at a party, and it just doesn't get much better than "This Is The Day".

"This is the perfect day" probably made Matt Johnson of the The a wealthy man. It's one of those "sort of hits" that have gained an odd staying power...you'll hear the song when you least expect it...while you're dining in a restaurant, as you sit at the beach, trying on a pair of shoes in a shoe store, or in my case, as I came off a beautiful ski run on a perfect day a couple of years ago, and it happened to be playing at the lift as I got ready to do another run.

"Soul Mining" is one of those albums you've had sitting in your LP collection for years. Then, you'll hear that one song somewhere, or you'll just think of it, and pull the LP out and say to yourself "Wow, this is just an incredible, timeless album".

As I write this, it's really quite hard to believe that it's been 23 years since this record came out. That feeling is reinforced as you listen to it. It's got a dance beat on the surface, but one of the many emotional themes running through it is the passage of time and how things change in people's lives.

This is truly Matt Johnson/the The's masterpiece. Johnson probes and confronts every aspect of the Jungian shadow with incisive lyrics and genre bending musical influences. Guitars sound like synths and synths like guitars.

The real beauty of this album is that it can be played as background music, or, if you dare, intimate, personal mind exploring journeys.

The album is still timeless in spite of having been recorded during the "synth/dance/80s" era. This is true first because of the wide array of instruments used in the arrangements, including, just as a few examples, marimbas, trumpet, accordion, and poly African rhythms and chants, but equally as much because of the emotional depths Johnson explores.

Personally, I like the original US version (no longer available on CD) that contains the extra song "Perfect", but either way, there's not one filler here. Just a perfect album.