Matt Johnson, the face behind The The, has always walked a tight rope between exceptional pop craftsmanship and brooding lyrics that fall on the far side of morose. While this creative tension has sometimes led his various bands into heavy-handed self-parody, it has also resulted in a lot of fine music over a nearly twenty-year history. Soul Mining was one of the most fully realized albums to come out of the 1980s British Synth Pop movement, and remains Johnson's most accessi...  [+]