Honky Tonkin'

The new Mekons album was the soundtrack to my dreams last night. Although I finished my post in the dream, when I woke up it wasn't done. Hrumph.

In 2000, The Mekons threw yet another change up in their long career of defying expectations, with the release of "Journey To The End Of The Night", a chilly, brooding disc that seemed to dwell on entropy and disintegration of man and his works. The music was somber and subdued, and rather than being a departure, in reality marked a new phase of the Mekons as a group: New English Folkists, with a bent for anarchy and a punk aesthetic. They celebrated with an Unplugged tour, with a welles Park performance archived on disc and distributed through the fan sites. Two years later, they followed with Oooh!, which delved even deeper into respect for the common man's English traditional music. While thematically dealing with religious overtones and revolutionary jargon, the music was as easily played in acoustic settings as with electric instruments, and traditional instruments were more forward than any time since "Honky Tonkin'"

A third album in this vein was released Tuesday, Natural. The band retired to an English farmhouse, armed with instruments they could carry. Langford claims they grabbed the instruments they didn't know and wrote songs in the countryside, amongst graves and stone circles. The full range of Mekes joined them, including rarely-touring members Susie Honeyman and Lu Edmonds (or, as they are known on the credits for the new disc, Susie Honey Extract and Organic Lu-cose)



The band has been a staunchly egalitarian affair since forming in the first flush of the punk explosion, with anybody playing instruments whether they knew how or not, and all creations credited solely to The Mekons. Albums are written during recording, after the band decides as a whole what the album is to be about.

In fact, the Mekons are probably the most literate band around. The lyrics avoid explicit messages, instead wrapping impressionistic phrases around a central topic. "Zeroes and Ones" a meditation of binary nature, warps a squalling guitar over minimalist lyrics: "zeros and ones, lost and found, found and lost, tide goes in, tide goes out." Other lyrics reference Goya and Edward G. Robinson. Religion makes an appearance, but not as a saving grace, but a distraction, a pastime. The liner notes are somewhat illuminating, with the lyrics being interspersed with quotes from Mencken and Baudelaire, bioscientists and ancient poems.

"Dicke, Chalkie, and Nobby" describes how friends fade as you live, lost to distance, or time, or death. (Nobby is the mekons site webmaster).

This is not Joni Mitchell folk album, warbling about the beauty of trees. Although electric guitars are minimal, there is tension simmering below the surface. The nature referenced throughout is the force of nature, the kind that created the planet and formed continents; and our relation to these inexorable, impersonal forces. Hell, the first song is titled Dark Dark Dark. Jon Langford plays with harmonica instead on many tracks, often recorded late at night when the alcohol had taken effect. "The twisted trees sing/ Dark, dark, dark" They are not describing a bucolic paradise.

The music is once again, all over the map. From the loping reggae of "cockermouth" to the wistful folkish tune "Dickie, Chalky, and Nobby", the Mekons refuse to pigeonhole their sound. The Chicago Reader described it as "post-apocalyptic campfire songs". I like that; it's not hard to imagine these being sung in unison by a small group of outcasts in a barren wilderness. Choruses have a sing-along feel; instrumentation is straightforward, and sounds ad hoc like a backyard hootenanny.



-Dark Dark Dark.
-Dickie Chalkie and Nobby.
- The Old Fox
-White Stone Door
- Shocking Curse Bird
-Give Me WinEO r Money
-Diamonds
-Burning In The Desert Burning
-The Hope And The Anchor
- Cockermouth.
- Zeroes And Ones.
-Perfect Mirror

Touch and Go has a bonus track to download from their site, an alternate take of "The Old Fox" with Lu singing; Also, there are two instrumental bonus tracks on iTunes.


As always with the Mekons albums, the aging and unrepentant, stubborn sots have followed their increasingly idiosyncratic muse and delivered and album that nobody has asked for, but maybe we need. It has reconciled the impulses that showed up in Journey and OOOH!! and is a worthy successor to those albums. As a matter of fact, the three make an excellent post-apocalyptic punk trilogy.

When pressed, I can admit that the Mekes are not for everybody. Some people just don't LIKE music that demands processing cycles, or varies from the standard love song subjects, or sounds different from what the radio tells them. But I will insist that if you give it some attention and volume, it will reward.

The Mekons play "A Quiet Night" at the Pabst in Milwaukee on September 27th, kicking off their American tour. Not many stops, but a worthwhile show. http://www.pabsttheater.org/mekons