Joe (2 + 2 is still on my mind) Fernbacher, Creem, 7/87
The The is the definite article! What started out as a slightly sour-mouthed Enoesque pavane on Soul Mining has blossomed (like an avenging triffid) into a rhythm-crazed psychosonic sushi on Infected. It’s nuclear winter muzak that could easily soundtrack your 19th nervous breakdown and your 35th viewing of Platoon—especially if you’re under the influence of thermal acid laced with the carbonation from a keg of Bud mixed with a condom full of that newest designer street drug that is destined to soon be featured in a 69-hour journalistic miniseries starring Geraldo Rivera and Vanna White.
In other words, The The is folk music for the seriously surreal. Kinda like what really happens down on Shakin’ Street after the bars close.
Matt Johnson—who, for all practical purposes, is The The—has to be acknowledged as a sort of third generation Todd Rundgren gone all zeitgeist mad on current events. I mean, the dude’s annoyed with himself and he makes no bones about it. He make LPs instead, which he produces, engineers, composes, arranges, sings and plays a host of musical instruments on—he’s into a real Orson Welles trip.
His vision includes an eight-fragment collage that’s a fiery series of chameleon percussions shimmying through some of the most self-incriminating lyrical debasements since Iggy convinced us that he really was dirt, but still OK after all. No slapdash philosophies or soapy attitudes here. This guy’s got some definite ideas about himself and his moment in this insane jungle of today. Just like I have some definite ideas about the songs on the LP...
The title track is the hit here, and the MTV video reminds me of a Klaus Kinski vs. Peter Tork Wretlemania vision I recently had after snorting some uncut, powderized Sun Country wine cooler. “Out Of The Blue (Into The Fire)” is a mental, wounded dervish into the very heart of sexual darkness. Certainly not a song to toss on the turntable during a feminist fundraiser. “Heartland” is a pseudo-jazz mambo voodoo epic, styled for those in limbo with an E-ticket waiting for a destination—or at least those down on the farm in Oklahoma waiting for the sun.
“Sweet Bird Of Youth” kinda takes up—in a primitive synth way—where “Major Tom” left off. We hear it’s a definite fave on Gadhafi’s Beirut blaster. “Slow Train To Dawn” is yet another of those “sex-and-death-lead-to-a-lasting-relationship” ditties that will instantaneously remind you of the recent spate of relevant Farrah Fawcett TV tragicoms. “Twilight Of Champions” looks mightily into the souls of the likes of Lee Iaccoca, John DeLorean and Gumby. And “The Mercy Beat” takes over seven minutes to tell us exactly the same things Jerry Lee Lewis once said in two minutes on “End Of The Road.” That doesn’t make it a bad song, ’cause it ain’t. Just redundant.
Geez, I guess I really like this record. This is the first cut-by-cut review I’ve done since I don’t remember when. On the other hand...
On Gods Own Medicine, the Mission U.K. come off like a buncha psychotic convulsionaries tit-upping their way through the kingdom of doom, despair and agony, “I’m British” style. These are the guys who sit around the barbiturate pool all day, fiddling with their older brothers’ hand-me-down paisley, while using words like languid, moil, mordant, lassitude and rankle, when all they secretly desire is to become Wheelies and rake their collective noses through the vulval gardens of Vanna White’s discarded lingerie hamper.
C’mon, if I hear one more song about a “Wasteland,” I swear I’m gonna creepy crawl into the White House (He went into the room where his father lived and...then...he), push the friggin’ button myself and let ’em all suck in the reality of a real glowing wasteland. OK, so their edition of the “Wasteland” motif has all the appropriate doom chords and lyrics. It still pales beside the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” which in turn pales beside Barry McGuire’s “Eve Of Destruction” which in turn pales before Rainy Daze’s “Blood Of Oblivion” and so on...
The Mission’s Gods Own Medicine might be awright in another moment in musical time. But in the context of the here and now—and based on what has passed musically in the last year or so—it is truly redundancy at its most irksome, despite the fact that competency abounds throughout the LP. I mean, who has time to listen to the same stuff over and over again?
I know I don’t because I’m currently trying to get all the area kids into a rigid program of drug testing. We’ve asked to test any and all drugs they want tested...
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