The Mekons

British-American rock band. Formed in the late 1970s,they are one of the longest-running and most prolific of the first-wave British punk rock bands

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert with The Mekons

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The world is doomed, but at least we’ve got the Mekons. The British punk band rumbles through its down-but-not-defeated songs with rowdy defiance.

 

By Lars Gotrich

The world is doomed, but at least we’ve got the Mekons. For nearly 50 years, the British punk band has always done things its own way — out of stubbornness, survival or maybe a little bit of both. That snaggled-toothed sneer and smile, with some bittersweet sentimentality swirled in, can soundtrack any moment, but especially when everything feels fraught.

At the opening of this Tiny Desk concert, we’re taken back 40 years to one of the band’s many crossroads. Mekons’ 1985 album, Fear and Whiskey, recognized that traditional country music was just as rowdy, randy and wayward as punk, and inadvertently pioneered the alt-country phenomenon. The joyous and desperate “Last Dance” is a song about falling in love during wartime — at the Tiny Desk, its past themes reverberate into the present. The middle of the set features two songs from this year’s Horror: “War Economy,” a post-punk-y throwback to the days when the Mekons would borrow Gang of Four‘s instruments to write and rehearse, and then “Sanctuary,” which, as my colleague Ann Powers wrote, is “a children’s rhyme that reveals itself as an elegy.” Susie Honeyman, whose violin steadies the storm of Mekons, takes a rare vocal lead, her sing-songy voice like a wisp in a billowing wind.

Another classic from Fear and Whiskey bookends the Mekons’ Tiny Desk. “Hard to Be Human Again” is a down-but-not-defeated barn burner that nonetheless needs to be sung loudly and in the company of fellow comrades who have also been “punched and beaten” by life or otherwise. And as long as Sally Timms, Jon Langford, Tom Greenhalgh, Rico Bell, Susie Honeyman, Dave Trumfio and Steve Goulding are around, I’ll be there “searching for existence with my red, red wine.”

SET LIST

  • “Last Dance”
  • “War Economy”
  • “Sanctuary”
  • “Hard to Be Human Again”

MUSICIANS

  • Sally Timms: vocals
  • Susie Honeyman: violin, vocals
  • Jon Langford: guitar, vocals
  • Tom Greenhalgh: guitar, vocals
  • Rico Bell: accordion, keys, harmonica, vocals
  • Dave Trumfio: bass, background vocals
  • Steve Goulding: drums

TINY DESK TEAM

  • Producer: Lars Gotrich
  • Director/Editor: Maia Stern
  • Audio Technical Director: Josh Newell
  • Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter
  • Videographers: Maia Stern, Joshua Bryant, Sofia Seidel
  • Audio Engineer: Josephine Nyounai
  • Production Assistant: Dhanika Pineda
  • Photographer: Alanté Serene
  • Copy Editor: Hazel Cills
  • Tiny Desk Team: Kara Frame, Ashley Pointer
  • Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
  • Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson, Robin Hilton

Source: Mekons: Tiny Desk Concert : NPR

Revenge of the Mekons

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Tom Greenhalgh, founding member of The Mekons, explains the band’s restless musical journey for Good Times from his home in England.

By Stuart Thornton

Forming almost 50 years ago, during the first wave of British punk, The Mekons have traveled a twisty musical path winding through punk, folk, alt country, electronic music and stranger places, including the bawdy, musical companion piece to experimental novelist Kathy Acker’s Pussy, King of the Pirates.

From his home in southwest England, founding member Tom Greenhalgh explains The Mekons’ restless musical journey. “The next time we do something we want to do something totally different,” he says. “We are completely not interested in just honing a sound down at all.”

The 2013 documentary Revenge of the Mekons traces the band’s history and has fans, including Santa Cruz-based author Jonathan Franzen and musicians Will Oldham and Craig Finn, explaining the unique appeal of the group. The entertaining film also tells the stories behind their classic albums, such as 1985’s Fear and Whiskey and 1989’s The Mekons Rock and Roll. Though the latter was a major label flop, it is home to some of their finest songs, from the muscular rocker “Memphis Egypt” to the woozy “Cocaine Lil.”

The Mekons Rock and Roll found the band on A&M Records and making music videos that got some play on MTV yet the release never really broke through. Part of the reason was that the A&M employee who signed them had suddenly quit. “We ended up on the label with people who basically didn’t have a clue what we were about,” Greenhalgh says.

It’s a typical story in The Mekons’ career. There was also that time that A&M refused to release their album The Curse of The Mekons for being “not up to sufficient technical standards.”

“Needless to say, this is what we call complete and utter bollocks,” Greenhalgh says.

The Mekons have persevered despite these setbacks and recorded 25 albums since their inception. Greenhalgh believes that part of the band’s longevity is because, at this point, it’s a part-time project. “Basically, especially these days, we are not a full-time band, so everyone is spread all over the world doing different stuff,” he says. “We get together to record and to play, then we disperse again.”

Released on April 4 of this year, their latest, titled Horror, was written and recorded in 2022, after the band met up in Valencia, Spain. When their previous label, Bloodshot Records, went under, they found they no longer had an outlet for the release. It eventually came out on the British indie label Fire Records. “We weren’t under pressure to finish it, but it doesn’t normally take that long,” Greenhalgh says.

While Horror might not rise to the heights of the band’s best works, a few of the songs are among the best that the band has written. “Mudcrawlers” is a jangle rock gem about Irish refugees that sounds as if it was beamed in from a 1980s-college rock station, while “War Economy,” with shouted lyrics including “physical coercion will not achieve dominance,” is straight from the Clash’s school of rhythmic political rock.

Many of the songs reflect a world in crisis. One of the slower numbers, “Fallen Leaves,” poetically references climate change with its lyrics: “Cold sweats through late summer/Blood traces on the ground/The dry earth cracks and shadows grow/A dying sun sinks down.”

Unfortunately, the problems the album addresses have gotten worse in the three years since it was written. “The whole idea of calling it [the album] Horror was basically a view of the state of the world then,” Greenhalgh says. “Since then, it’s gotten a thousand times worse.”

Following the Mekons’ tour of the United States—where they will play 30 dates in 30 days including a stop in Santa Cruz—the band will release a remix of Horror done by Tony Maimone of Pere Ubu that will draw even more of the album’s darkness to the surface. “The idea is to make it more horrible, or more horror,” Greenhalgh says. “Make it really scary.”

Source: Revenge of the Mekons | Good Times

Classic Album Review: Sally Timms’  “Cowboy Sally’s Twilight Laments For Lost Buckaroos”

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Mekons vocalist Sally Timms has the voice of an angel and the heart of a cowgirl. Both of them come out to play on Twilight Laments, her first solo album in years and a disc that truly proves that even cowgirls get the blues.

By Darryl Sterdan

On these 10 twisted lullabies about sad milkmen, dark suns and Dr. Strangelove, Timms’ lovely, cotton-candy voice sweetens her melancholy melodies like a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down. For her part, Miss Sally gets help from fellow Chicagoans like Mekons mate Jon Langford,Robbie Fulks, violinist Andrew Bird and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who all lend a pen, a pluck, or a production hand to the cause. Not that she needs it; all by her lonesome, she spins these eccentric ditties with an easy grace and hypnotizing beauty that’ll smooth your troubled brow and sweetly send you off to dreamland.

Source: Classic Album Review: Sally Timms | Cowboy Sally’s Twilight Laments For Lost Buckaroos – Tinnitist