The The - Gun Sluts (1997)

The 1990's saw the return of Matt Johnson's band The The, following some years as a solo artist under his own name, helped in no small way with the recruitment of ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr to the group, alongside ex-Nick Lowe bassist James Eller and ex-ABC drummer David Palmer, as fully-fledged members. This line-up, plus guest singer Sinéad O'Connor, recorded the album 'Mind Bomb', which debuted at No. 4 in the UK Albums Chart and featured the band's highest charting single to date, with 'The Beat(en) Generation' peaking at No. 18 in the UK singles chart. Keyboardist D.C. Collard was added to the official line-up in 1989, after Steve Hogarth, who'd played on 'Infected', opted to become the new lead vocalist of Marillion, and this line-up embarked on a lengthy world tour in 1989/90 called the The Versus The World, which was filmed by Tim Pope during the three nights the band performed at London's Royal Albert Hall. The studio EP 'Shades Of Blue' was released in 1990, including cover versions of Fred Neil's 'Dolphins' and Duke Ellington's 'Solitude', as well as a new original song 'Jealous Of Youth' and a live version of 'Burning Blue Soul's 'Another Boy Drowning', and in 1993 the band released the 'Dusk' album, which debuted at No. 2 in the UK album chart, and which spawned three Top 40 singles in the UK. This was followed by another world tour, the Lonely Planet tour, after which Marr and Eller left, and were replaced by Atlanta-based guitarist Keith Joyner and New York bassist Jared Michael Nickerson, with the group having already lost Palmer partway through the tour, being replaced by ex-Stabbing Westward drummer Andy Kubiszewski. Now permanently relocated to New York, The The's next project was 1995's 'Hanky Panky', an album that consisted entirely of Hank Williams covers, and which was recorded by a new line-up consisting of Johnson, Collard, Fitting, ex Iggy Pop guitarist Eric Schermerhorn, ex David Bowie bass guitarist Gail Ann Dorsey, plus drummer Brian MacLeod. in 1997 the band recorded an experimental album called 'Gun Sluts', but it was so unlike their other records that their record label refused to release it, saying that it was too uncommercial, and so it was consigned to the vaults. Only the title track ever officially appeared, as an extremely rare promotional single sold on the NakedSelf tour, and the rest became a legendary addition to the bands discography, as well as causing the band to sever their eighteen-year relationship with Sony Records, and to sign to Interscope, on Trent Reznor's Nothing Records imprint. Johnson played one track from the sessions on his Radio Cineola internet podcast in 2010, and then in 2020 he released rough mixes of six recordings from the 'Gun Sluts' sessions as an official bootleg, in order to try to stem the sale of unauthorised pressings on the internet. By collecting together all the extant recordings from the 'Gun Sluts' sessions that have surfaced, we can approximate what the album might have sounded like, and although it might not be to the taste of some fans of the band, this all instrumental cacophony is just the sort of thing that I love, so I'm pleased to be able to post it here. 

Track listing

01 Gunsluts
02 Boiling Point
03 Love Lamp
04 Fuck Wit
05 Kid Killers
06 Echo Plasm
97 60 BPM
08 Psychic Sauna
09 Gunsluts (A Funkorelic Extension)

The The - The Pornography Of Despair (1982)

'The Pornography Of Despair' was originally intended to be the debut album from Matt Johnson's band The The in 1982, but was scrapped in favour of the more commercially-friendly 'Soul Mining', which was issued the following year. As it turned out this might have been a good decision, as 'Soul Mining' was a commercial and critical success, putting Johnson on the indie map, and paving the way for many more successful releases over the next 30-plus years. Rather than scrap all the recordings, however, Johnson used them for b-sides and bonus tracks on the cassette issue of 'Soul Mining', and so using these and other songs which surfaced later, we are able to piece together an approximation of what the album could have sounded like. There's no record of the exact track listing for the original, but this is as close as we'll get until Johnson gets around to releasing it, which is unlikely. 'Absolute Liberation' did come out on the 1983 ‘This Is The Day’ EP, alongside 'Mental Healing Process' and 'Leap Into The Wind', and 'Three Orange Kisses From Kazan' and 'Waitin' For The Upturn' had already appeared on the 1982 'Uncertain Smile' single. 'That Sinking Feeling' did end up on 'Soul Mining', although this version is more lo-fi and much longer, and 'Cold Spell Ahead' is actually an early version of 'Uncertain Smile'. 'Soup Of Mixed Emotion' was on a limited edition 12" single with initial copies of 'Soul Mining', and 'Fruit Of The Heart' eventually surfaced on the b-side of the 'Heartland' 12", but unless you have the 'Early Rarities' bootleg, this is the first time that you'll have a chance to hear the rest of these songs, and be able to make up your own mind whether this album would have been as successful as 'Soul Mining' in launching Johnson's career.  

Track listing

01 The Nature Of Virtue
02 Leap Into The Wind
03 Dumb As Death’s Head
04 Mental Healing Process (For A Mixed Up Kid)
05 Absolute Liberation
06 Uncertain Smile
07 Perfect
08 Three Orange Kisses From Kazan
09 Waitin' For The Upturn
10 Fruit Of The Heart
11 Soup Of Mixed Emotion
12 Untitled
13 The Sinking Feeling

Suggested by 'The Greatest Albums You'll Never Hear' by Bruno MacDonald