This Is The Land Where Nothing Changes

Unbelievably, for me at least, The The's second album Infected was released on 17th November 1986. Thirty six years ago!

 

Whilst Soul Mining is an incredibly important album to me, Infected has the edge as I got it on the day of release and played it to death from the start. Sound Seekers, an independent record shop in Staple Hill, a suburb of Bristol, was my local go-to as a teenager and Dave the owner was a great guy for a budding music collection and enthusiast. 

 

Dave knew how much I loved The The. He had managed to get a copy of the first, limited edition 12" single of Sweet Bird Of Truth and the double 12" and cassette of Heartland. Whilst Dave hadn't been able to get hold of the withdrawn 'wanking' 12" of Infected that preceded the album, I came away again with the double 12" and cassette singles.

On 17th November 1986, I raced to Sound Seekers after school to pick up the Infected album. Dave had put aside the limited edition "torture" sleeve with a giant fold out poster of Andy Dog's illustration for the Heartland single. "I've got something else", Dave said with a smile, pointing to a couple of in-store promo cardboard cutouts for the album. "I haven't got space to put them up here, so you can have them for free if you like". Of course I like!

I must have been a strange sight, walking jauntily back to my parents' shop a mile or so up the road, with a life size head-to-waist cut out of a topless Matt Johnson under my arm. Back home, both were prominently positioned in my room; both long gone now, sadly. I can't remember what happened to them but this would have been way before eBay or a realisation that they might have a resale value. 

The Heartland poster also went AWOL. I visited my brother in his bedsit a while later and saw that he had a Heartland poster up on his wall. I should add that he didn't have Infected on any format at the time, let alone the limited edition vinyl. Swore blind that he hadn't nicked my poster, but he had form for 'migrating' vinyl from my to his collection. Water under the bridge, I managed to get hold of another poster at a later date.

I was surprised to find that, of my numerous The The posts, this is my fourth post this year specifically about a song from Infected, having previously enthused about Angels Of Deception, Slow Train To Dawn and The Mercy Beat. Heartland previously featured on the homemade Testament To Reality cassette compilation that I posted in August 2021, but thankfully (for this post, at least) was missed off the video selection that I posted a few days later.

The video for Heartland is directed by Peter' 'Sleazy' Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Coil) and was filmed at Greenwich Power Station. It's a deceptively simple set up, with Matt performing on stage against a giant screen backdrop of distorted and pixelated video images, playing to an audience of one, a woman in white T-shirt and Levi's, glugging a bottle of Coke. 

 

In an 1986 interview, Matt Johnson described Heartland's political theme:

 

"I’m attacking those working-class Tories and middle class who still think Britain is on a par economically with France and Germany… I wanted to write a classic song which is basically representative of its time, a record that in 1999 people will put on and it will remind them exactly of this period of time… you know it took 18 months to write on and off because I knew it was the most important song I was writing."

 

Could the 25-year old Matt have imagined that, thirty six later, Heartland would not only remind people of a point in time but still feel so relevant today? As Matt sings elsewhere on the song, "This is the land where nothing changes"...

 

None of this detracts from the fact that Heartland is a brilliant song. I remember hearing it on Radio 1 of all places, though I guess the references to piss-stinking shopping centres and pensioners being raped must have been edited out of the broadcast version. Poring over the album credits, whilst it was no surprise to see regular collaborator Zeke Manyika on backing vocals, I'd forgotten/didn't know that piano on Heartland was played by Steve Hogarth, who went on to replace Fish as lead singer of Marillion. I haven't knowingly listened to any Hogarth-era Marillion, but he did a good job here.

 

I've listened again to the Infected album in full whilst writing this. What an incredible, incredible record.