Nakedself

Smooth transaction with fast shipping. This is a well-recorded The The album which has some good tunes on it. Very nice selection.

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.

Nakedself was unfortunately overlooked upon its release in 2000. Matt Johnson is an obscure name now, but at one time, his band The The was quite popular. Their album  Mind Bomb  (1989), with  Johnny Marr  on guitar and  Sinead O'Connor  on guest vocals, is one of the all-time best rock albums, with a highly original production that sounds unlike any other album. I would go so far as to say that The The was the best band that Marr ever played in.But after  Dusk  (1993), Johnson turned his back on fame. Few rock musicians have ever done the like. Instead of recording a new album of original material, Johnson made a  record  of Hank Williams covers. It took seven years before he released Nakedself. Aside from a couple of new songs written for a  best-of  album in 2002, this ended up being The The's last album. It was a troubled recording that ran into problems with budgeting and promotion, which is maybe why it's not quite as good as The The's best work.Around 1997, Johnson worked on a project called "Gun Sluts," which reportedly sounded very dissonant and experimental. But that project was never released, allegedly due to the recalcitrance of Johnson's label. One track was distributed as a promo ("Gun Sluts," quite rare), and two others ("Boiling Point" and "Diesel Breeze") were carried over to Nakedself. These two songs offer a glimpse of the album Johnson really wanted to make."Boiling Point" is remarkable. As expected, it sounds much harsher than any previous The The material. Both the guitars and keyboards have a heavy, metallic production, with a noticeable industrial influence. (The album came out on Nothing Records, founded by Trent Reznor of  Nine Inch Nails  -- Reznor admired Johnson's work, maybe that worked both ways.) Johnson's versatile voice snakes around the noise and changes, alternately taking a harsh timbre that fits the music, and a gentle falsetto that contrasts with it. Towards the end, there is a powerful guitar crescendo, and Johnson matches it with a menacing chant that somehow turns into a vulnerable moan in the outro. Listening to this song reminded me that Johnson was a very distinctive and capable vocalist.A few other songs use this production style to good effect. "Global Eyes" starts with a peculiar industrial synth-dirge that recalls the later work of Bryn Jones. "Salt Water" is an impressively unhinged guitar roar -- the actual guitar line is fairly simple, but the song is short, and its brevity conveys the intended aggression very well without wearing out its welcome. "Diesel Breeze," the other Gun Sluts out-take, is a curiously abstract piece, mostly instrumental, with a short impressionistic lyric tacked onto the end as an afterthought.But a good half of the album has a very different sound. Songs like "Shrunken Man," "Soul Catcher," "December Sunlight," "Weather Belle," and "Phantom Walls" are all ballads with a strummed guitar accompaniment. And the strumming is very similar throughout. The guitar rhythm in "Shrunken Man" is pretty much the same as the one in "Soul Catcher," which itself is fairly close to the one in "December Sunlight." And so on. Worse, strummed guitar doesn't sound very good in such a murky production. It is loud and overbearing where it should be lyrical. The one song in this style that sounds good is "The Whisperers," where the guitar has some low-tuned fuzz.Johnson's writing is somewhat uneven, but occasionally excellent. He goes through his usual topics of neurotic loneliness and political anxiety, but in a more downbeat manner than on Mind Bomb. "Boiling Point" and "Diesel Breeze" are arresting interior monologues of despair, full of images of urban decay with no positive outlet. On the other hand, "The Whisperers" and "December Sunlight" soften things up a bit with sympathetic character portraits like much of what Johnson wrote for  Infected  (1986). Unfortunately, the overbearing guitar jangle of "December Sunlight" gets in the way of the lyrics, and Johnson's atypically loud vocals in the end don't suit the mood.The political anxiety is somewhat formulaic. "Swine Fever" is a simplistic attack on consumerism -- the "gotta buy, gotta buy" chorus of the song later became a slogan for the merchandise section of Johnson's website, and I'm not sure that Johnson's intentional irony works in his favour. Such topics are less central here than on Mind Bomb, though. But the declarations of personal troubles also become formulaic eventually. "Voidy Numbness" is an extremely awkward phrase for expressing angst, and the music drags also with a sub-par guitar grind. "Phantom Walls" has some thing about how your pain can be your friend, which is a really cheap resolution to the menacing loneliness expressed in "Boiling Point."Basically, it feels like Johnson's heart wasn't in it for half the album. Individual songs show that he was still a very strong writer and musician. "Boiling Point" and "Diesel Breeze" illustrate what he really wanted, and feature the album's most interesting music. "The Whisperers" is an effective subdued take on the same subject matter, and a few other songs provide interesting variations on these ideas. But the rest of the album is filled out with self-similar guitar strumming, which does not match the intricate dissonance of the best music, and feels like a half-finished sketch. It's even more frustrating when one knows that Johnson probably won't be coming back.

Takes about 5 or so listenin's to really get it. Great record from a true genious.

Until only very recently, the The was just another band with a silly name I'd heard of. However, when Matt Johnson signed to Nothing Records I started paying a little more attention (Nothing Records is the label founded by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails). When Matt Johnson decided to release NakedSelf for free over the internet, I downloaded the first two tracks out of interest. This was enough to make me go out an buy the album, and I must say that I wasn't disappointed. The first track, BoilingPoint is my current favourite. Unlike the other tracks on the album, it is an odd intrustrial/grunge melody that gets into your head and doesn't go away. This track alone is almost worth the price of the album. However, the other songs on the CD are extremely listenable themselves, although they are mostly simpler, guitar driven songs that remind me a _little_ of Radiohead. The standout tracks on the album are 'ShrunkenMan', 'TheWhisperers', 'GlobalEyes', 'WeatherBelle' and 'PhantomWalls'. In fact, the only track on the album that I have any aversion too is the final song 'SaltWater', which is a messy, almost punk-like song. I'm sure every last long time the The fan out there will disagree with my review, but I am a first timer normally found listening to NIN, Marilyn Manson and Pink Floyd.

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.