From the 1993 LP I Love Mekons…Video directed by Barry Mills
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
The Arts Fuse Review: The “Horror” of the Mekons
The apocalyptic overtones of the Mekons’ music come across as alarmingly real as ever.
By Steve Erickson
The Mekons had the rare privilege of being able to debut twice. The first time came in 1978, with their singles “Where Were You?” and “Never Been in a Riot.” They’re among the highlights of that era’s post-punk outburst, but the two albums that followed them pleased no one. The band temporarily broke up but, in 1985, after they had fallen off everyone’s radar, the Mekons dropped Fear and Whiskey. The spirits of Hank Williams and Gram Parsons were yanked out of their graves and made to witness Thatcher’s England. In parallel to the Pogues’ music of the same era, the recording infused a punk sensibility into roots music. Whereas Shane MacGowan drew on his own Irish heritage, the Mekons turned to American country and folk music to fashion a voice that would speak about life in a dying empire. Several more classic albums followed: The Edge of the World, Rock’n’Roll, The Curse of the Mekons. Those achievements explain why interest in the band persists, decades after they started out.
The band members were in their late 20s around the time Fear and Whiskey and The Edge of the World were released, and they already sounded tired and weary. Song titles like “Hello Cruel World” and “Hard to Be Human” tell the story. The performers never presented themselves as stars speaking down to their audience. Listening to their music makes one feel the band is traveling down the same road as their fans. Their struggles with the recording industry have only enhanced this empathy. Selling 25,000 copies, the Mekons’s A&M debut Rock’n’Roll was dismissed by the label as a flop, despite the fact it earned ecstatic reviews. The band could not even find an American label to release their next album The Curse of the Mekons. Only the Chicago-based indie Quarterstick finally offered them the necessary stability and support.
Drummer Steve Goulding told me “no one has ever made a living from the Mekons.” They weren’t too concerned with commercial success: suspicious of A&M, they deliberately left what would have been the most obvious single, “Heaven and Back”, off of the U.S. edition of Rock’N’Roll. There’s no explanation for why they couldn’t have generated as big a fan base as the Pogues or even the Clash (London Calling), except that the Mekons always undercut their most accessible tendencies. “Memphis, Egypt” is an exciting, anthemic rock song that also doubles as a Marxist critique of popular music as a capitalist product. Working with a major label required unhappy compromises, such as editing out the line “this song promotes homosexuality” from their music video “Empire of the Senseless” to receive airplay on MTV’s 120 Minutes.
The Mekons’ first album in five years, Horror takes on the roots of present-day political malaise fearlessly. Instead of just raging against the moment, they point out that we’ve been heading right where we are now for centuries: “400 years of stealing and killing, a giant Frankenstein.” The song title “The Western Design” could not be blunter. Beginning in the 1600s, as “John Dee, with his scrying mirror/necromanced the British empire,” lyrics look back at the roots of European imperialism in the Americas: “they couldn’t capture Hispaniola/so they went and found a harbor/the dawn of British empire.” With rhythm guitar strummed on the offbeat (as in reggae), the music situates this story of exploitation in the Caribbean. “War Economy” picks up the story down the road, with a series of one-liners that tell colonizers to fuck off: “physical coercion will not achieve dominance.” “Mudcrawlers,” the album’s catchiest song, relates stories of starving Irish immigrants arriving in the U.S., with jangly guitar licks ironically mirroring their hopes.
Other songs are less directly political, though they still serve as elegies for a country and planet in decline. The ballad “Fallen Leaves” aches as “the dry earth cracks and shadows grow, a dying sun sinks down.” (Its music video depicts two band members as an elderly couple, suggesting the tune may reflect the performers’ feeling about aging.) “You’re Not Singing Anymore” and “A Horse Has Escaped” continue the album’s mix of the personal and political. The latter ponders “were we ever happy or were we never happy?…the ship is sinking, and a horse has escaped.”
Out of the Mekons’ entire discography, Horror lands closest to 1988’s So Good It Hurts, its scrambling of genres undergirding political iconoclasm. Their music’s apocalyptic overtones come across as alarmingly real as ever. One of the Mekons’ enduring concerns has been that oppression makes people miserable. Their ‘80s music spoke out of the psychic toll of living with diminished hope for the arrival of political solutions. Horror takes on a more subdued tone. All but two members of their 8-piece lineup sing lead vocals. Because the singers are constantly switching, the album has a somewhat communal feel. It is as if Horror stares into the void and the band draws on its collective strength to find reasons to go on.
Steve Erickson writes about film and music for Gay City News, Slant Magazine, the Nashville Scene, Trouser Press, and other outlets. He also produces electronic music under the tag callinamagician. His latest album, Bells and Whistles, was released in January 2024, and is available to stream here.
Source: Album Review: The “Horror” of the Mekons – The Arts Fuse
Review: Horror has rekindled my love affair with The Mekons
By Simon Coffey
UK Punks The Mekons were born in 1976, during 1970s crisis Britain, their resistance narrative was steeped in Cultural Marxism (think Democratic Socialism in the 21st Century) and shaped by music, art and literature.
Their Leeds-based collectivist neighbours were The Gang of Four, Delta 5, Scritti Politti and Fad Gadget, all were inspired by the Sex Pistols, some, like them, fell by the side, but the (Mighty) Mekons have kept the punk rock message of resistance in tenacious stead for almost 50 years!
50 years, well somethings have changed, with only two original members from The Mekons Story years (1977-82), Jon Langford and Tom Greenhalgh, along the way many have joined, including luminaries such as Lu Edmonds (Shriekback, Public Image Ltd and The Damned) and drummer – Steve Goulding (who played on The Cure’s Let’s Go to Bed, and Elvis Costello’s Watching the Detectives)
What hasn’t fallen by the wayside is The Mekons collective anarcho-communist sociopolitical resistance to the dissonant state of the world around them. Horror abounds with resistance to (British) Imperialism, arms dealing, geopolitical bullies (think Trump and Putin) and even the fascicle nature of modern-day punk rock (lazy love songs with flaccid-oomph).
Horror, The Mekons 20th (proper) album, their first in five years, and first on Fire Records, is not a million miles away from their 1978 (almost) smash hit Where Were You?, a Marxist love song, possibly the greatest punk rock love song ever written. But as the decades have passed The Mekons have adopted, adapted, consumed and revelled in musical genres, adding to their punk/post-punk origins from (English) folk, (early American) country and roots dub.
The Mekons have been teasing Horror since last year with singles You’re Not Singing Anymore, Mudcrawlers, War Economy and The Western Design (which leads Horror) being released online strategically since late 2024. As exemplars, these four offer wide-ranging glimpses into the diversity that inhabits the Mekons creative ID. Horror is almost a microcosm of 50 years of Mekon-ism. It’s switching lead male/female (Sally Timms crystalline tones are unsurpassed) vocals, harmonious-violin versus noise-guitar, voracious beats mirrored by gentle rhythms, the personal (Glasgow) versus the political (War Economy), all of which have created an album that rivals (or maybe compliments) the mighty two: The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen (1977) and The Edge of the World (1986)
Horror has rekindled my love affair with The Mekons, a fanboy, I am, of the The Mekons Story years and endeared by the Sin City (84-88) period, I am hopeful that Horror is a reason to keep the Red & Black flag flying.
Source: Mekons – Horror (Fire) 13th Floor Album Review – The 13th Floor
Horror is released on Friday, April 4th on Fire Records
Available on Limited Edition Red LP & CD
Fire Shop/Bandcamp deluxe bundle w/ tote bag + ‘Horror’ art cards
Flashback 1997: The Mekons hit the road and the road hits back
by Zak Mucha
December 18, 1997
In the Whirlaway Tavern, near the corner of Kedzie and Fullerton, the conversation between Sally Timms and Jon Langford keeps getting sidetracked by the American Music Awards on television. LeAnn Rimes is holding the last notes of a syrupy song with a sleepy-eyed grin.
“A 14-year-old girl,” Timms notes.
“Oh, God,” Langford groans.
Maria the bartender comes over to refill the gin and tonics. “You working hard?” she asks Langford, who says he isn’t. “What happened to my tape?”
Langford’s been bragging about his friend and band mate, accordion player Rico Bell, who titled a song after the bar. “Rico’s coming,” he tells her. “He’s coming next week.”
The girl on the TV screen takes a bow, and the bartender asks Sally Timms, “You like this kind of music?”
“Nah.” Timms hesitates. “Well, it’s all right.”
Timms and Langford’s band, the Mekons, has been making music for two decades, but the awards program has almost nothing to do with their careers. As a rock group they’ve won enough accolades to perform in art museums, but never enough money to keep from driving themselves from show to show in a rented van.
Right now they’re discussing Timms’s recent relocation to Chicago. Currently half the band lives here, the other half in London.
“I wouldn’t mind living in New York,” Timms says.
“You can’t afford it,” says Langford.
Timms ignores him. “Yeah, New York or Los Angeles.”
Langford begins to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“I can’t see you in LA,” he says. “You’d need implants.”
“I have them,” she replies with a quiet indignity. “They’re just in the wrong spot.”
On television, LeAnn Rimes has been replaced by Pat Boone, dressed like an aging Tom of Finland.
“Who the hell is that?” someone across the bar asks.
During this past year–the Mekons’ 20th–the band made a short tour of Boston and New York. They arrived in New York for the opening of their art exhibit, “Mekons United,” at a SoHo gallery. When they returned to Chicago, they resumed recording their next album, tentatively titled Me. Then they kicked off the Museum of Contemporary Art’s performance season with Pussy, King of the Pirates, a theater piece based on their 1996 album with writer Kathy Acker (both the play and the record were derived from Acker’s novel of the same name).
Before that show, Langford told me Pussy reminded him of British holiday revues. “It’s like a pantomime, you know, a musical play. It’s a seasonal thing after Christmas, traditional that every town has a big pantomime.” He said the best of these shows feature a lot of shouting, audience participation, corny jokes, and cross-dressing. “We’re going to do it like a proper pantomime. I’m not quite sure how that’s done, but we’ve got the cross-dressing down.”
Diving into a project without much planning has been business as usual for the Mekons. “If we know how it will end up,” says Langford, “why bother doing it?”
The Mekons formed in May 1977, six months after the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Damned played at Leeds Polytechnic. Langford, Tom Greenhalgh, and the group’s other founding members were art students at Leeds University. Do-it-yourself record labels were popping up throughout England, and bands were being formed dozens at a time. One punk zine published three basic guitar chords and instructed readers to start their own groups.
The first Mekons singles–“Where Were You?” / “I’ll Have to Dance Then on My Own” and “Never Been in a Riot” / “32 Weeks, Heart and Soul”–were released on the Fast label in 1978. In May of the following year critic Mary Harron asserted that rock was the only form of music that can be done better by people who can’t play their instruments: “This idea underlay punk,” she wrote, “but the Mekons were the first to base a group on that principle alone.” When Langford says he was the band’s best musician, he’s not bragging. “‘Cause I was a horrible drummer.”
The success of the Sex Pistols convinced major record labels that there was money to be made in punk music. Virgin Records signed the Mekons, but the sales of their first album, 1979’s The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen (the cover depicts a chimp at a typewriter), didn’t meet Virgin’s expectations. “It got a bit nasty,” Langford says. “There was no promotion. Punk bands were disappearing under the major labels.”
“It was just these horrible gigs,” recalls Greenhalgh. “We were playing for packs of skinheads. People were getting stomped. It got ugly. After a time we didn’t want to play live anymore. Not like that.” Greenhalgh got his nose broken at a benefit show for Rock Against Racism. “I don’t know, someone came backstage and punched me in the face.”
While the Mekons were formed under the banner of punk, pinning them to one category has been nearly impossible since. Over the years they’ve played rock, pop, reggae, and country and western, making them problematic for major labels and PR departments, which favor neatly packaged commodities. In more than one account the band has been described as a socialist collective. But while politics has always been an influence, they don’t take things too seriously. They see themselves as an ensemble that’s free enough to go in several directions at once: they’ll have four singers, two guitars, an accordion, drums, violin, lute, tape loops, bass, and keyboards. They’ve always prided themselves on doing what they want–be it performing a lesbian pirate show, writing a collaborative novel, or touring only when they feel like it.
On a Wednesday morning in September, Timms is heading south in a rental van with drummer Steve Goulding.
“Are we picking up Rico?” Goulding asks.
“No, he’s just going to shag his way out to Boston. Probably get there before us.”
Rico Bell (aka Eric Bellis) is the official playboy of the Mekons. Timms and Goulding are the designated drivers.