Post-punk auteur Matt Johnson, best known as the one-man creative driving force behind seminal college rock band The The, hasn’t exactly been idle during the past 24 years — he’s been “very, very active,” working on soundtracks, founding his own indie record label and book publishing company, and building a new studio. But this year’s triumphant The The return, Ensoulment, in the first official The The studio album since 2000’s NakedSelf. And in the record  “encompasses characteristic topics ranging from love and sex, war and politics, life and death, to the meaning of what it is to be human in the 21st century,” according to a well-worded press release.

Much has happened in Johnson’s life, and obviously in the world, during the 21st century. Johnson, who’d been working in music since age 11 and formed The The at age 17, started off the 2000s feeling “burnt out,” and after a “very negative experience” with Universal Music (the label that released NakedSelf), so he decided to take some much-deserved time off. And then “personal stuff got in the way of life; life became quite complicated,” he explains. There was a move to from New York to Sweden with his then-partner, followed by the breakdown of that relationship; the birth of a second son, now age 12, with a new partner; a stint in local London politics that he ultimately found “demoralizing”; and a freak throat infection that landed Johnson in the Elephant Man’s hospital during the height of the pandemic and nearly killed him. All of this left Johnson with “not much time for doing what I should have been doing, really, which was writing songs and performing them.”

But now, all of this informs the lyrically brilliant new The The album, which ranges from sweet love songs like “I Want to Wake Up With You” and “A Rainy Day in May”; to a wryly humorous look at modern love in the digital age, “Zen and the Art of Dating”; to scathing political observations like “Kissing the Ring of POTUS” and “Cognitive Dissident”; to even one morphine-fueled fever-dream of a song that came to Johnson as he was hallucinating in his London Hospital bed in 2020.

Now that The The are back (and touring again, playing Ensoulment in its entirety followed by a second set of classic cuts),  Johnson sits down with Lyndsanity in the middle of an election week from his Seattle tour stop for an interview — as heard in the YouTube player above and laid out in the Q&A below — that is as astoundingly deep, wide-ranging, and eloquent as his lyrics.

LYNDSANITY: When you played Royal Albert Hall in 2018, which was eventually packaged as your multimedia project The Comeback Special in 2021, that marked your return to the live stage after 16 years. But it has been almost a quarter-century since you’ve released a proper The The studio album. I’m sure every interview you’ve done for Ensoulment has brought up the obvious question of why there was such a long hiatus, but I understand that it was the 2016 song “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming,” about your late brother, that was the catalyst for The The’s eventual return.

MATT JOHNSON: Yes, you are correct. And it was during the making of the documentary The Inertia Variations by one of my [former] partners, Johanna St. Michaels, a Swedish documentarian. She wanted to make this documentary, which was based upon the poem by John Tottenham, an English poet who lives in Los Angeles. It was a meditation upon procrastination and idleness, I suppose, and it was brought to me by my old friend, JG Thirlwell, who said it reminded him of me. I read it and I fell off the chair laughing, crying, and it really felt like me at that period of time. So, I contacted John, asked him permission for me to do an audio version, like a spoken-word version, which he agreed to, and I did it. And then Johanna loved it and wanted to make a documentary. … But during the making of that documentary, that’s when my older brother Andrew, also known as Andy Dog, who created most of the artwork for The The’s albums, fell ill and died. … There was a song I was working on about London, which I was having trouble finishing, but then when Andrew died, “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming” just fell out of me. And then I did a live performance at the end of the documentary, which was the first time I’d sung live in many years. That’s what gave me the appetite to go back to performing live. And then The Comeback Special project in 2018 happened. It all led on from Andrew dying, really making me realize what I should be doing with my life. Life is very fragile and short, and you’ve got to make the most of it.

But interestingly, the song that I was trying to finish, that Johanna was pressurizing me to finish, was “Some Days I Drink My Coffee by the Grave of William Blake.” That was the song about London, which I was halfway through and couldn’t finish, and then that became the first song for Ensoulment. But of course, Ensoulment would’ve been out sooner if it hadn’t been for the pandemic, which obviously put the world on pause for a couple of years. And also, I got struck down by a mysterious throat infection which nearly killed me. That was an unfortunate situation, and that was at the start of the COVID pandemic, though it was nothing to do with COVID.

I recall this, thinking how scary it must have been to be in the hospital during the height of the pandemic. But I don’t think I was aware of how serious it was, that it was potentially fatal.

Yes, it was. I didn’t want to have a throat operation because you hear about these terrible situations where people have had tracheotomies and they can barely speak anymore, so I was terrified of that. I kept saying, “I don’t want the operation, I  don’t want the operation,” and then the surgeon sat on the end of my bed with all his staff around sat surrounding me, and he said, “This is no longer about tone of voice. This is life or death.” And so, I thought, “OK, I better have the operation.” And then what happened was in the aftermath in the hospital, I was very out-of-it on morphine, and that’s when I started to write the words to “Linoleum Smooth to the Stockinged Foot.” I was trying to create something positive out the situation that I thought it was so bizarre. I was sort of semi-hallucinating. It was such a strange experience to be in a hospital at that time, because all of the staff were obviously masked up, I wasn’t allowed any visitors, and it was quite surreal. I remember writing in my notebook as I was lying there — it put me in mind of several films and books, one of which was Tchaikovsky’s Solaris. Another one was Lars Von Trier’s The Kingdom… and a short book by Evelyn Waugh called The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold where he went on a cruise and he was having a nervous breakdown. So, these were my reference points. It was so surreal and I was literally sort of hallucinating. I didn’t know what was going on, and I thought, “I’ve got to keep notes throughout all of this,” because I knew it would become useful. That then obviously became quite fertile ground for creating that song, “Linoleum Smooth.” I drew upon all of that stuff.

Well, at least you got a good song out of this ordeal! You said this infection wasn’t COVID-related. Do you know what caused it? It seems so random.

It was random! It was a pharyngeal abscess, so an abscess of the pharynx. I was reading up about it in the hospital bed while recovering. The hospital that I was in was the new London Hospital, on the site of the old London Hospital which is where the Elephant Man had lived, and I was lying there in this slightly hallucinogenic state thinking I was back in Victorian times. And then I was looking up Dr. Google as I was lying there, after they diagnosed what the problem was. It used to be a completely fatal situation. If you got diagnosed with that in Victorian times, it was pretty much a death sentence. But obviously with technology now with being what it is and skillful surgeons, they sliced it out. I’ve got the big scar across me throat, but they slice you open and drain it.

You talked about how you didn’t want to have this surgery, because obviously any singer would be concerned if it would affect their instrument. Did you have to relearn to sing? Do you sound any different now? Did it affect your voice in any way, temporarily or permanently?

No, it didn’t, actually. They did advise me not to sing for six months, and I followed the doctor’s orders very, very strictly. The operation was in early May [2020] and I didn’t sing until New Year’s Eve, and I was very drunk at a friend’s karaoke New Year’s Eve party. And funnily enough, the first thing I sang was “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis Presley. And it was joyful. I thought, “Crikey, I can sing again!”

I’m very glad that you recovered and are touring and making music again. We have already touched on a couple of songs from Ensoulment, but there are others I want to discuss, particularly because of the titles that popped out to me. I especially wonder how the crazy events of recent years affected what you were writing about for this record. I assume they did.

Well, they did. During “Linoleum,” that altered state I was experiencing, I had these very strong, disturbing feelings of this nascent biosecurity state that’s being erected around us. Because at that time, the discussion about it was almost like there was this dystopian world government taking shape, using the COVID situation to suddenly push through a lot of draconian measures. Digital IDs, informed consent being thrown out the window, people being bullied and threatened — it created this very disturbing atmosphere of hostility, very, very divisive. And that’s one of the hallmarks, I think, of early 21st century that we’ve seen in America, in Britain — particularly extreme divisiveness. I know obviously there’s an election [in America] coming up, probably the most divisive election in many, many years, and you have to ask how we got ourselves into this situation.

There are not many political songs on this album, but “Kissing the Ring of POTUS” was really referring to what I call the neocon/neoliberal coup of the last few decades, where you have this pro-war agenda which has taken root on both sides of the Atlantic. If you go back a few years, I think all the major political parties seemed to have been infiltrated by what I would call the extreme center, the ideology of war and privatization. For instance, you go back a few years in the U.K. and we had a prime minister, Tony Blair, who led the Labour Party, who was an extreme warmonger. The Labour Party was traditionally anti-war and pro-public ownership, but the Labour Party was infiltrated; it became new Labour. So, you had the policies of Tony Blair, which were pretty much identical to a Republican president like George W. Bush; the pair of them were sort of inseparable. It launched the illegal war against Iraq. It unleashed this war of terror across the globe, and countless countries were being destroyed as a result of that. But then if you fast-forward slightly, you had David Cameron, who was a Conservative British prime minister in office the same time as Barack Obama, a Democratic president. And again, they had identical foreign policies, so the Democrats were the same as the Republicans. The Labour were the same as the conservatives. Then they went on a rampage launching illegal wars against Syria and Libya. And it makes you wonder, “Well, who’s making decisions?” It doesn’t seem to make any difference if it’s Labour or Conservative, Democratic or Republican, in terms of foreign policy. I know there are certain differences in terms of domestic policy, although in Britain there doesn’t seem to be that much difference between Tory and Labour.

What was interesting was the way that the language, or as I mentioned in one of the songs, the lexicon, was being weaponized, in that anybody that spoke out that was anti-war… was considered an extremist. If you were anti-war decades ago, during the ‘60s or ‘70s, to be anti-establishment and anti-war would’ve been a badge of honor. But now anybody that’s anti-war is considered a conspiracy theorist. It’s very interesting the way that it’s been twisted and turned, and the propaganda has been so effective at shutting down debate that you have this culture of self-censorship, because people are terrified of being canceled for saying the wrong thing. Personally, my beliefs are pretty simple. Expression. Freedom of speech. I believe everyone has the right to express themselves, be who they want to be, as long as you’re not imposing it on others. And equal opportunity — I’m not talking about equality of outcome, necessarily, but equal opportunity for everybody. Access to good health services, access to education. It’s pretty straightforward stuff. But in this day and age, even those pretty moderate views can be considered extremist if you don’t toe the line, the narrative of war and this sort of almost cartoonish view of the world of good and evil:
“We are good! Everyone else is evil” And so we are now in this terrible situation with extreme divisiveness. It’s just endless wars, forever wars, and tyrannical law.

Do you still live in the U.K.?

Yes, I live in London, and I still travel a fair amount. … Funny enough, I was in Washington, D.C. recently, and whenever I’m in a city, I like to wander around and looking at the monuments or museums or architecture. And I paid a visit to the Lincoln Memorial, which I hadn’t been to for several decades, and I just loved reading the words carved into that incredible memorial and how inspiring and uplifting it is, how America was founded on high ideals. And I imagine what someone like Lincoln will be feeling if you could see what’s happened. But it’s always inspiring to go back to remember those high ideals and think, “Is there a way to get back to them?” Who knows?

Have you ever thought running for office yourself? Obviously politics is something you’re passionate about.

No. … When I moved back to East London, I got involved in local politics. By that I mean conservation, trying to preserve old buildings and retain the historic character, particularly the area that I lived in, but also other parts of London. I spent about seven years doing that. And then you realize — not that it’s much of a surprise, of course — just how corrupt the board is tilted. The whole thing is rigged. I would speak at local council planning meetings, and you are up against very powerful interests and very corrupt situations with the property developers. There’s so much money involved and they’ve obviously got certain local council planning figures on board. And you can’t say the “C-word” publicly, “corruption,” because you can’t prove it. … It was quite demoralizing, realizing that no matter what the local community wanted, no matter how involved they got in all these public consultations, the decisions were already made beforehand. It’s all quite boring, demoralizing stuff.

I did toy with the idea of standing as an independent counselor just because I was so outraged at the levels of corruption and incompetence that I was seeing, and also the way that the local communities are treated with absolute contempt by many — not all, because there were some lovely counselors and people that do get involved for the right reasons. But the problem is the ones that managed to sort of climb up the greasy pole are the ones that seem to be the most corruptible ones. The more sincere and honest people, those that are not corruptible, will tend to get marginalized. The ones that really thrive in that political environment are the ones that are more corruptible. I couldn’t bear being involved in that. I’d rather get back to what I love doing and what I’m better at doing, which is songwriting and singing. And that’s one aspect of I do. I mean, most songs I’ve written aren’t political, actually. They’re about love, sex, life, loss.

You mentioned the word “dystopian” earlier. Isn’t AI a theme on Ensoulment? That’s certainly modern dystopian phenomenon.

Well, it’s sort of in the background. But the song “I Hope You Remember (The Things I Can’t Forget)” has a line, which is “the machines are here to correct our thoughts.” I didn’t want to write a song completely about AI, but I just wanted it to be in the general atmosphere in the background of the album. There’s an interesting thing I read a week or so ago: There was a report or a survey done in Australia, and I suppose you could apply this to any country in the world, where they found that 70 percent of the people that took part in the survey — and this is only going to rise — did not know, could not tell the difference, between communicating with AI or with a human online. That’s frightening, and it’s only going to get more and more sophisticated. … In five years’ time, you and I could be having this conversation and you wouldn’t know if it was me or not me, or vice versa. You’ll have a digital version of yourself created, and it will look exactly like you, a lovely face with pink hair and a pink background and your voice, and it would’ve analyzed everything you’ve ever said or written or your interviews, so it would know exactly the sort of answers that you would give, the sort of questions you would ask. This is really where we’re heading.

And there’s positives and there’s negatives. It’s like any technology — like nuclear power can be used to power a city and all the hospitals and the schools within that city, or it could be used to destroy the city. The same thing with AI. And the problem is there doesn’t seem to be any safeguards. There doesn’t seem to be any guardrails. It’s just a bit of a Wild West. Obviously each government as well as each big corporation is trying to get a lead on everybody else, and we don’t know where it’s going and what use it will really be put to. We are in that nascent stage, and I wanted to include that somehow, because also the title Ensoulment is obviously the moment the soul enters the body. I like the title because it ties in with earlier albums like Burning Blue Soul and Soul Mining, but also because what makes us human. … I think there’s a whole philosophical debate that needs to be had about what makes us human, what gives meaning to our life. I don’t think it’s just being idle, open-mouthed consumers being weighted on hand and foot by robots. But so, this technology is rushing forward and there’s not been a debate. We don’t really know what the consequences are. They could be wonderful or they could be terrifying, but I think the debate should be had.

But then again, maybe AI would be more ethical and moral and humane than humans! I mean, if you look at it, the wars that are going on, the poverty, we don’t do that great job of running things. And there’s also the theory that we, humanity itself, is a form of AI — that we are existing in some sort of a holographic universe. And if you think about it, how rapidly humanity has evolved, and scientifically the last hundred years, it would take a civilization maybe 40 or 50 years more advanced than us to actually create us. So, if you think about it, we are creating various life forms already and certainly mutating them. I mean, most religions, they talk about creators, don’t they? Maybe God is just a 50-years-more-advanced version of us. Who knows? But we’re in fascinating times.

We really are. There are other songs on Ensoulment I want to ask about that might relate to all the things we’re discussing now. One is “Zen and the Art of Dating.” Dating is quite robotic these days. It mostly exists online. I find that dystopian in some ways. If the only way you meet a prospective mate is on your phone, instead of having to actually leave your house and interact with people, I don’t think that is great for society.

Yeah, it’s interesting. The title references that famous book from the ‘60s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which itself referenced a book [from 1948], Zen in the Art of Archery. It’s playful about that, but it does comment. I suppose the pertinent line in that song is when I say, “Maybe it’s a cliché, but maybe it’s true that only when you stop searching for love will love come searching for you.” We are living in a very — and I’m certainly not above all this myself — intensely consumerist, materialistic society. I’m a bit of a shopaholic myself. I’m a bit materialistic and I buy stuff that I don’t need a lot of the time. But relationships become commodified through these apps, and also I think there’s a quality to it that people will have the apps and even if they meet someone, they can’t get off the apps, so they’ll continue seeing other people all the time. And so, people don’t really know if they’re fully connected with somebody, because they’re still putting themselves on the market or using aliases. The whole thing is very, very addictive, and it is also in a way outsourcing your own independence, in that you are not feeling complete unless you are connected with another person. I think that it’s sort of disempowering to feel continually that way. Some people are happier being single, and there’s nothing wrong with being single and being independent and not having children. And there’s this pressure on people. They’ve got to be coupled up. They’ve got to be sexually active. There’s a huge amount of pressure, particularly on younger people, to the detriment of self-development. Maybe it is a cliché, but when people really work on themselves, become fully independent, fully happy, and content within themselves, that’s the time they’re most likely to attract their ideal partner.

And I suppose that’s the point I’m trying to make: that basically when you stop searching for something, actively, desperately searching for something, you don’t really need it anymore. That is when that situation will appear — not a codependent, desperate situation, but a true healthy, nourishing relationship of two independent souls that choose to be together. They’ve got something to offer each other. That’s the really message behind that song, and it’s set in a humorous way. The first verse is from the female point of view, and the second from the male point of view, which made me chuckle as I was writing it, that he was sitting at the bar eating crisps, which is a very English thing to do. And then he’s angry. He was the one that left the relationship, but he’s a bit upset that she seems happier than he does now, and he’s getting very anxious. And then he’s getting drunk, and then he’s checking his recent searches, and his biological urges start to kick in. It was a playful, humorous song about quite a serious situation actually, in that there’s a generation being lost to screens – “screenagers.” Not just a generation, but several generations. I mean, we’re all addicted to our phones, really. They’re very, very, very dominant in our lives now.  I don’t personally use social media, but I know people that think they’ve got thousands of friends on Facebook or whatever, but how many of these people do you actually know? Do you sit face-to-face and have genuine, open-hearted conversations? That’s the important thing in life, because there’s an energetic exchange when people are in each other’s company.

I don’t want to slam people’s life choices if they’re happy, but there are a lot of people that are having basically virtual relationships, meaning they met someone online and they’ve literally never been in the same room together, never met in person, but they consider this person their girlfriend or boyfriend or significant other. And there are people actually getting AI girlfriends and AI boyfriends, who treat them probably better than the real thing. Again, very strange times we’re living in.

Yeah, and I think in Russia and probably in other countries they have these brothels with these robots. People are having sex with robots that like these human-sized sex toys, and they’re proven to be very popular. It’s a bit of a step up from the old blow-up doll situation, I suppose! But if you look at the video market, when VHS cassettes were predominant, the main driving force was pornography, and it was the same with the internet. So, I suppose it makes sense in some way that the main driver with a lot of robotics and virtual reality is going to be the sex industry.

We’re going down a whole other road here! But it’s interesting thing, because porn has always been something people want to consume, but you used to have to make a lot of effort to access it. You had to go to a video store or a movie theater in a raincoat, or order something that came in a brown paper wrapper, and there was the fear that you might get caught. You didn’t just press a button on your computer and have easy, private access to pretty much any kind of sexual scenario. There is now a generation that has watched a bunch of unrealistic porn before ever being in a real-life situation where they might be in a bed with a warm, breathing, naked human body. And that has to mess with their ability to interact.

It is a real, real worry, and particularly because at the touch of a fingertip it’s available to young and younger people. Six-year-olds,10-year-olds can be accessing the same stuff as a person in their thirties or forties or whatever. It is a real worry, and I don’t think enough consideration has gone into it. I know there are suggestions in Australia — and I would agree with this — to ban smartphones to anyone under the age of 16. I would actually agree with it because when you see the kids, they are zombified. And also, the way that young brains can’t cope so well with it. They act like crack cocaine addicts — when you try to get them off the phone, they start shouting and screaming. It’s done in the name of profit, doing all sorts of damages to young people, desensitizing in some ways. The implications for personal relationships — not only romantic and sexual relationships, but any kind of relationships and any kind of human interaction — seems to be affected in ways we don’t fully understand.

What are you doing as a parent of a 12-year-old to deal with this?

Well, you just put the controls on his phone so that he has to ask permission, but he’s a clever lad, so he finds ways! I’ve got the password, and one time he figured out how to do it. I said, “How did you figure that out?” I was wearing my reading glasses. And he told me, “I looked at the reflection [in your glasses] when you were typing it in.” They’re crafty little kids. They’re clever. They find ways around everything

Actually, that’s kind of funny. I’m impressed.

I was impressed on the one hand, and a bit irritated on the other.

I do want to stress people that Ensoulment is not a super-dark or bleak record, even it covers some heavy stuff. Are there other tracks that you specifically want to discuss that dive into these themes?

Yes, “I Want to Wake Up With You,” which is obviously not a political song. I’m very pleased with that song in various ways. That’s a song that covers a period of time. It’s looking back, looking forward, and it’s quite philosophical, but the second verse of that song — and this relates to what we’re talking about with dating, or being in the same room as somebody — I wanted to get that moment just before sexual consummation between two people, that moment where two people are obviously very attracted to each other, that moment when there’s recognition that it is mutual and that sort of inevitability that they’re about to merge sexually and consummate the relationship. I wanted to capture a very romantic scenario, which was the detail of the leaves on the trees outside the window, and then inside the room, “the incense curling around the bed posts,” “confidences shared,” bodies, beds, and then the looking into each other’s eyes. I’m very proud of that lyric because I think that really captures that moment really well. And then the verse after that, which is that realization that when it says, “Summer never really ends, it just moves elsewhere.” It’s the same with love — the initial love, the passion, and then it gradually dissipates. It’s not because either person is incapable of loving anymore, but their attention wanders and the feeling moves — and it moves onto someone else, possibly. It’s just the cyclical nature of love and relationships, and that’s what I wanted to capture in that song. Like I said, most of the songs aren’t political. I’m sometimes pigeonholed as a political songwriter, but I’d say 80 percent of my songs are not political. They’re about human experiences.

“Down by the Frozen River” was about truanting, or as you say in the U.S. playing hooky; I was very naughty and I ran off from school all the time. That was a poem I wrote a number of years ago, and I found it again, and then I revised it and set it to music that I collaborated on with my keyboard player, DC Collard. It’s just my feelings about the education system. I was one of the lucky ones, and I think about all these intelligent young girls and young boys that are given no support or encouragement at school and just slip through the net and end up making nothing of their life because they weren’t given the necessary encouragement. That’s really what that song’s about.

“A Rainy Day in May,” that’s quite a romantic song that is about a brief encounter between two people that doesn’t even involve them even talking. It’s just catching each other’s eye in a public place; it’s a brief, transformative moment. And suddenly in that instant, all sorts of possibilities open up, fantasies of other lives that could have been led. A brief chance encounter, even one that’s extremely subtle, can have quite a transformative effect on one’s day or even one’s life. That’s really what that one’s about.

“Risin’ Above the Need” is about overcoming addiction and numbness, really: “Stripped of my addictions and deceit/I’m feeling somewhat incomplete/You see, too much was never enough for me.” That’s quite autobiographical. I’ve had moments of numb, sort of addictive behavior and then overcoming that. “But all good things will come through the door to those who do not even want them anymore,” which is again similar to the theme in “Zen” when you stop searching. There’s quite a sort of a Buddhist outlook to some of these songs, and I wanted it to be quite a positive, hopeful album. There’s the message of finding, connecting with one’s true self throughout the album.

What else? Oh, “Cognitive Dissident” is quite Orwellian. It’s about the surveillance state and censorship, the cancel culture that we’re currently living in. So, that’s quite straightforward. “William Blake” is that song about changing London, the changing in political landscape, but the irony is William Blake is now lionized by the British establishment as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, British poets and painters. But when he was alive, he was hated by the establishment. He was a dissenter who died a pauper, and now we are again in an age where William Blake is lionized. There’s this increasing, as I mentioned, sort of censorship and attack on freedom of expression and freedom of speech, so that’s what that’s about.

I have to ask about “Where Do We Go When We Die?” When we’re talking about the human condition and state of the world, basically all the things we’ve been talking about, that title jumped out at me.

That was written for my late father, who sadly died just before the start of the last tour. I was close to my dad. Again, it’s about what I believe is the cyclical nature of consciousness and the human spirit. I’m not a religious person, but I’m not an atheist, and I do believe that when human consciousness is released from this frail physical form, there’s not just an annihilation of consciousness or a ceasing of consciousness. I think it just changes form. And so that’s a hopeful song, but also that third verse about packing up clothes and books, taking them to the charity shop, that’s something that sadly many of us have to go through when older relatives die. It’s a very heartbreaking, poignant thing. But also just the line, “Sons become fathers, fathers become sons,” it’s the cyclical nature of life and people that love each other. That was quite an emotional song to write.

Well, I think we’ve just done “A Complete, Annotated Guide to Ensoulment with Matt Johnson”…

I think we did a really good interview. I think we went very deep. We covered a lot of ground!

We sure did! I guess I will wrap by asking, you did take a long period of absence from the stage between 2002 and 2018, and then of course your throat issues, and well as the pandemic, took you off the touring circuit for a while again. How does it feel to be back on the road now, full-time and at full force?

It’s been wonderful, actually. … And it’s what I am supposed to being doing. When I was a little boy, 11 or 12, my fantasy was to be doing what I’m doing, and to still be doing it and still enjoying it. … That little boy would’ve been very happy to think I’m not only made a good career in music, but I still love doing it. I wouldn’t do it otherwise; I just would continue taking time off. So, I never take it for granted.

This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity. Listen to Matt Johnson’s full, extended interview in the YouTube player at the top of this article.