This is an album that I used to own, buyng it off the back of the single Heartland. Apart from that track, and the opening vocal burst of “Infect me with your love”, I didn’t really recall much of it. A lot of it came back to me during listening, however.
Matt Johnson delivers an altogether darker album than last time we had an album from the The. The notion of infection carries through the album – the title track Infected is about obsessive love, Out Of The Blue is about a soul-less sexual encounter (possibly with a prostitute), Heartland is about the decay of British society (“This is the fifty-first state of the United States”), Sweet Bird Of Truth is inspired by American interference in the Middle East - “When the planet’s little wars start joining hands”. Sickness of the soul, whether of a person or a society, is a running theme.
The music brings in elements of soul, blues, art-rock, featuring Neneh Cherry as guest vocals (on Slow Train To Dawn), arrangements from Art Of Noise’s Anne Dudley, keyboards from Steve Hogarth of Marillion and a host of session musicians to give a complex sound. I liked it a lot more than I remember doing so back in 1986, a strange mix of bleak lyrics and a lush soundscape. And the topics are just as relevant then as they were back then, alas.
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