A-Side: Uncertain Smile
B-Side: Three Orange Kisses From Kazan

Label: Some Bizzare EPC A 2787
Producer: Nick Tauber

Released: 08/10/82
Purchased: 06/11/82

The The | Uncertain Smile | (Some Bizzare) 1982 | There are times when Matt Johnson, the more than some bizarre creative force that is The The, sounds uncomfortably like none other than (shriek! horror!) Ian Anderson, Tull’s monoped flautist, and there’s even a flute happily chirping away on this attractively atmospheric tune.

But while Tull are fetid and stagnant, The The music combines the gentle fluidity of synths, sax and flute with the jumpy boisterousness of an oddball vibraphone (?) percussion effect that sounds like a ballbearing bouncing down the inside of a length of drainpipe.

It’s an hypnotic recording that hooks deeper into you with its casual intrusiveness the more you hear it. And I can remember the days when I thought Some Bizzare supremo Stevo was just an ugly, hair-brained pain in the arse who kept hassling me to use his bloody ‘Futurist’ chart and camping it up around the office. He’s still ugly, of course, but he certainly seems to know good music when he hears it. (Sounds, 02/10/82)

The latest protégé from Stevo and Some Bizzare. Long and drawn out, deliberate and laboured sound delving off into percussion interludes. Really not worth the reputation it has accidentally acquired. (Record Mirror, 02/10/82)

What a wonderful state the world must be when a mushroom casualty like Stevo can elicit literally thousands of pounds from record companies in exchange for fey, precocious electro whimsy.

But let’s leave Soft Cell out of this. Matt Johnson is the new bore with the synth snore and wet fourth form poetry. The song and the words drone away in the most inoffensive, inactive manner possible.

Matt sings as plaintively as a mountain goat at milking time with no one to squeeze his udders. A very rich goat, but a goat nonetheless. (NME, 16/10/82)