Musically, Soul Mining is a post-punk and synth-pop album with influences of the early 1980s New York club scene, while Johnson's lyrics focus on relationship insecurities and social alienation, with imagery derived from dreams.

Soul Mining was released in the United Kingdom on 21 October 1983 on Some Bizzare Records/Epic Records and included versions of the singles "Uncertain Smile", "Perfect", and "This Is the Day".

Soul Mining was reissued in June 2014 as a two-disc 30th anniversary deluxe version on vinyl, attracting retrospective reviews which universally praised the record, with critics describing it as both Johnson's best work and one of the best albums of the 1980s.

[7] With his new-found wealth Johnson was keen to experience what New York had to offer, disappearing from the studio to explore the Lower East Side and take drugs, which left him in an unfit state to record.

[7] The rest of the songs for Soul Mining were written during 1983, either in Johnson's bedsit in Highbury or in the flat of his girlfriend Fiona Skinner, in Braithwaite House in Finsbury.

[10] In an interview with Melody Maker in May 1983, five months before the album's release, Johnson shared fragments of the lyrics that he was working on, and said that many of them were based on mental images and states of mind.

He also quoted another lyric in progress: "The sun is high and I've been out on the verandah sitting in life's proverbial rocking chair, blanket over my knees", and then explained that "I've always had these images on my mind, very strange dreams.

[7][11] Throughout May 1983 The The held a weekly residence of concerts at the Marquee Club in central London, featuring many of Johnson's musician friends from the British post-punk scene.

These included Orange Juice drummer Zeke Manyika, do-it-yourself synthesizer pioneer Thomas Leer, and the experimental Australian musician JG Thirlwell, credited on the album as one of his early aliases "Frank Want", and who would go on to achieve some degree of recognition recording under the name Foetus.

Johnson recalled that Holland had turned up on a hot summer's day in full motorbike leathers, listened to a couple of minutes of the song as a run-through, and then played his solo in one take, with a second drop-in afterwards.

[14] As with many of The The's early albums and singles, the original cover artwork was created by Matt Johnson's brother Andrew, aka "Andy Dog".

[1] Johnson liked the painting, feeling that its colours and African connections fitted with Soul Mining's musical style, and insisted on using it for the album cover, despite Andy's reservations about its suitability.

Early pressings of the original UK vinyl album included a free 12" single of an extended remix of "Perfect", with "Fruit of the Heart" and "Soup of Mixed Emotions" as the B-sides (catalogue number XPR 1250).

Don Watson of NME said, "In days when the pop song has been reduced to the reiteration of catch-phrases, Matt Johnson flexes a rare literary flair.

"[24] Dave Henderson of Sounds called the album "a classic slice of everyman's everyday music, ready made for the radio, the dancefloor and those thoughtful interludes late at night".

[19] In the US, Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone praised Johnson's "sense of structure and his unerring ear for sonic definition" and highlighted "Uncertain Smile" and the "entirely gorgeous piano solo by the exceptionally talented Holland", but had reservations about the "obsessively self-absorbed lyrics...

However, Loder concluded, "Johnson creates pop music with an agreeably individual stamp: In the current sea of synth-pop sludge, Soul Mining stands out".

Michael Bonner of Uncut described the record as a "masterpiece" and said, "Released in the interzone between post-punk and synth pop, and reflecting both, Soul Mining thrums with ideas, tension and dread.

Johnson's enduring lyrical concerns – social alienation, political disillusionment and troubles of the heart – are all present and correct, but unlike the industrial/psychedelic adventuring of Burning Blue Soul, they are here given a glossier sheen...

He stated, "The years might not have been quite so kind to Soul Mining were it not for the inspired guest performances that Johnson teased out of his collaborators", singling out Holland's piano solo as "a high point on an album full of them".

[32] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian also noted Holland's "genuinely astonishing performance" and said, "The lyrics contained the occasional hint of histrionic gaucheness – 'the cancer of love has eaten out my heart' seems a pretty melodramatic way to say you got dumped – but more often they're strikingly precocious: 'Uncertain Smile''s brilliant drawing of a confused relationship, 'The Twilight Hour''s painfully accurate depiction of self-obsession... More striking still is the ease with which Johnson marshals a kaleidoscopic array of musical influences into something coherent and unique.

Quite aside from Holland's boogie-woogie piano, over the course of Soul Mining's seven tracks, you variously hear folk fiddles and accordion, the popping basslines of contemporary funk, punishing industrial beats, electronics derived from New York's then current club music...

But Soul Mining never sounds disjointed, never feels like an exercise in smart-alec showboating: Johnson's songwriting holds its disparate elements tightly together."