Soul Mining & Infected

Soul Mining is the debut album by British alternative rock/synthpop band The The. The 1981 album Burning Blue Soul was originally credited to the band's frontman Matt Johnson as a solo album, but later reissues now credit it to The The. Soul Mining was released in October 1983 and included versions of the UK singles "Uncertain Smile" which reached no. 68 in December 1982, Perfect which made no. 79 in February 1983, and This Is the Day which reached no. 71 in September 1983. Although the album peaked at number 27 in the UK album chart it has subsequently been hailed as one of the best albums of the 1980s. (YouTube)

Infected was The The's second album (if one excludes Burning Blue Soul and The Pornography Of Despair, which was never officially released), released in 1986. It is reputed that the album used 67 different musicians and 3 producers. The money lavished on it and its companion full-length video seemed at the time to be extravagant for an obscure band. Many of the tracks carried on with Johnson's main topics of his feeling of alienation from society as all whole and the melancholy that this generates in young males. However around this time Johnson was becoming aware of World Issues or the culture clash between the West and Islam. The song Sweet Bird of Truth is about a pilot trying to save his plane whilst flying over Arabia and was released just prior to Reagan's 1986 Bombing of Libya. (YouTube)

Infected's sound still suggests dance-pop, especially on the title track. But don't get the impression that it's made for dancing. Instead of the light fare displayed on Soul Mining, Infected's songs seethe instead of preen, and Matt Johnson's lyrics are laced with tension. Thematically, he plunges a lance into the exposed midsection of Great Britain, analyzing the state of modern urban life in the country. "This is the land where nothing changes," Johnson sings on the World Party-ish Heartland. "A land of red buses and blue bloody babies/This is the place where the hearts are being cut from the welfare state." Angels of Deception matches rain-slicked verses to a powerful chorus flavored with gospel backup singers and enormous reverb percussion. With production tricks like this, Infected aligns itself with the dance-pop sound of its predecessor (and the prevailing sound of British pop music at the time). But there's no denying the record's acerbic lyricism or dark-toned instrumentation. Sweet Bird of Truth is gritty pop tinged with wartime radio chatter and muscular horns that somehow manage to be apocalyptic, and the sweaty finale Mercy Beat has a drink with the devil while dance-pop burns brightly in the background, sending embers into the London night sky. Synthesized horns and crashing drums converge around a mirthful Johnson lyric before the song finally fades to the weird tones of a looped guitar. Infected was the first true indication of Johnson's mercurial nature, and established the dissonance and reinvention of his later work. (AllMusic)