The The: Naked Self

Enigmatic anti-star Matt Johnson has done just about everything in his power to remain cloaked in obscurity. His early synth-pop excursions elicited some hits, so he turned around and went neo-Gothic, unleashing a string of dark albums (Infected, Mind Bomb) obsessed with the fall of the British empire and Biblical apocalypse. His political singles and albums were routinely banned in prudish and punk-phobic England, while his success in the U.S. remained cultish at best. Johnson released one of the strongest albums of the '90s in Dusk, but followed that disc with Hanky Panky, an album of radical Hank Williams covers. His 1997 album, Gun Sluts, was reportedly so dark, weird, and disturbing that his label refused to release it unless Johnson brightened it up. He didn't. So now comes Naked Self, The The's first album of new material in six years and Johnson's most aggressive disc to date. Signed to Trent Reznor's Nothing label, Johnson clearly had permission to explore his inner demons and, even more so than Reznor, he's full of them. Johnson has often been likened to a modern bluesman, and Naked Self is steeped in downbeat songs and blues riffs soaked in feedback. Performed as a raw and stripped-down quartet, Naked Self is a predictably harrowing portrait of lonely city life, where the individual is reduced to just so much clutter on the sidewalk. Much of the melodicism of The The's mid-period work has been reduced to a dirge-like racket, but the occasional acoustic-guitar riff lifts the music out of the menacing murk. Johnson, however, is one of the few personalities who can pull it off, and tracks such as "Shrunken Man," "The Whisperers," "Global Eyes," and "Phantom Walls" stand with the best work he's done.