Mekons - Punk-folk in the trenches

"GB84" is a mystery novel, a poetic and apocalyptic thriller, surreal and realistic, imaginative and enigmatic, oppressive and liberating, lyrical and explosive. It was written by David Peace, famous for a quartet of novels on West Yorkshire; four books that are likewise hard to pigeonhole, noir and socially committed, revolutionary in style, with a plot that hits like a knife blow. In "GB84" he tells the story of the British miners' strike in the year named in the title (of the last century); and then the violence of the police, the corruption of union bureaucrats with their moral failings, the cynicism of Mrs Thatcher's government, the Iron Lady. With two narrating voices that intertwine and chase each other right to the end, explaining how, between 1984 and 1985, Britain fought its last civil war, between the mine owners on one side and the miners on the other.

The Mekons sided with the miners without hesitation. Both alone, as a band, and collectively within Red Wedge, the association of musicians supporting the miners' struggle founded by the troubadour Billy Bragg.

A few months earlier, though, the band had taken part in recording the compilation "They Shall Not Pass", its cover featuring a stylized miner in a clear act of rebellion. The Mekons recorded "Fight The Club" and "This Sporting Life" for it. The other bands too, from Redskins (with "Lean On Me" and "Unionize!") to Three Johns ("Pink Headed Bug" and "Two Minute Ape"), were, like them, all on the front line of national and international support for this epic struggle. "Fight The Club" is by Crass, a touch softer and less raspy, but with the same urgency to communicate, just like the second track, interspersed here and there with chants that sound like those of the miners, built on a dense musical weave that leaves no room to breathe: everything is kinetic, condensed gun-cotton: guitar, bass and drums. Full stop.

That record was the forerunner to the birth of the Cuneo Rosso (Red Wedge). The name was borrowed from a painting by El Lissitzky ("Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge") to state unambiguously which side one stood on during the toughest phase of the miners' strikes. Taking part (in the concerts and in the benefits generally) were Style Council, Communards, Heaven 17, Prefab Sprout, Elvis Costello, Tom Robinson, Beat, Lloyd Cole, The The, Captain Sensible and of course the Mekons, who played more than once in front of the striking, occupied mines; often alongside the anarcho-punk collective Crass.

The 1985 album Fear And Whiskey marks the Leeds band's return to a full-length work. The year was "dictated" by their strong emotional involvement in the miners' struggle described above. It was indeed that intense participation that brought the group's members back together after a long spell without rehearsing or recording anything new.

The musical style is no longer the raw, stripped-down one of their early days: a hostile, lightning-fast punk-rock. Now the sound is more mediated, more reflective. Country music, moreover, runs through almost every groove. Hence the steel guitar with its constant echoes of Chicago blues, doggedly accompanied by harmonica.

The themes are marked by a gloomy, almost bleak thread running through them. A devastated humanity, stripped of hope. Certain guttural sounds best capture this climax. No hope, no future. "Trouble Down South" is the album: an electronic foundation reminiscent of the best Wall Of Voodoo, voices chasing one another in the manner of Dead Can Dance, violins binding the whole musical skein together. In "Country" we find the Mekons we love, with choruses embroidering Jon Langford's splendid voice and guitars spraying out notes that run free. In "Abernant" the drums are punk, so is the bass, while the guitar provides harmonic counterpoint. Breathless, "one, two, three, four…; one, two, three, four…", while in "Last Dance" the Pogues' brothers and the Members' cousins show up: a scrappy punk-rock dancing with the folk tradition of Dublin's pubs.

The band formed at the tail end of 1977: Jon Langford, Kevin Lycett, Mark White, Andy Corrigan and Tom Greenhalgh. All students at Leeds Art College. From that same scene, incidentally, sprang Gang Of Four and Delta 5 (but that's another story). The name comes from the protagonist of a comic strip widely read in the Fifties and Sixties, an evil being from deep space.

Their first single was "Never Been In A Riot" (a parody and mockery of the Clash's "White Riot", much as Crass — comrades-in-arms in supporting the striking miners — did on their second album, declaring "We Are Crass Not Clash"). Their first full album, The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen, is a genuine masterpiece of prescient, explosive post-punk. Slowed-down basslines, derailing guitars, syncopated drums and often shrill vocals. Sounds that are, at times, even cacophonous, closely akin to the vitriol of the Pop Group. Lyrics that, though sarcastic, are combative.

The opener is the title track. Voices used as a musical instrument, first singly then in chorus, chasing a lopsided drumbeat and a guitar that leaps over the time signature. Then "Heart And Soul", with Jon Langford howling raucously alongside the instruments at a medium-fast pace. Punk in its purest form, the communal, animalistic punk of late-'70s/early-'80s London. The two minutes and eleven seconds of "Spoons No More" distill the deindustrialization of Leeds and other English working-class cities carried out by the Iron Lady: the guitar screeches and reverberates, the drums limp along almost out of sync with the track, the bass thin yet tenacious as a steel wire.

As does the following The Mekons, closer in its dissonances to Rip Rig and Panic than to the Pop Group. So, more lopsided, uncertain funk à la James White than the full-on free-punk assault of DNA, to stick with New York.

Mekons Story closes the first chapter of the Leeds band's history. "Letter's In The Post" lasts one minute and 15 seconds: they really are the Ramones of Albion's shores. Then "Where Were You": the guitar kicks in, slow as Chinese water torture, before speeding up as the drums come in, and finally bass and voice that at times recall the early Devo, metronomic and mechanical. This is the common thread running through every track on the album: direct and without frills.

It's worth mentioning, again regarding their early output, their participation in 1980 in the compilation "Mutant Pop", a seminal new wave collection — in the broadest sense of the term — that brought together, from Leeds, Mekons and Gang Of Four, from Edinburgh Scars and Flowers, and from Sheffield 2*3 and Human League. The band contributed two tracks for the ages: "Weeks" and "Where Were You". The first with guitars and bass screeching, clashing against one another before reconverging through the male/female vocal interplay that recreates the blend. The second recalls new-wave sounds in the vein of the very earliest Cure and Sound, with a deep, melancholy voice much like that of Sound's vocalist, Adrian Borland.

Two years earlier, in 1978, the Mekons had been among the key participants in the great march of autumn 1978, organized by Rock Against Racism (RAR), the anti-racist organization founded in 1976 in response to the growing wave of violence against the Black and Caribbean community carried out by militants of the fascist National Front.

That autumn, indeed, 100,000 people took part in the march from Trafalgar Square to East London, where an open-air music festival was held in Victoria Park, organized by RAR and the Anti-Nazi League. Performing at the concert alongside the Mekons were: Clash, Buzzcocks, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, Ruts, Sham 69, Generation X, Tom Robinson Band, Stiff Little Fingers, Misty In Roots. It's hardly a coincidence, then, that not long after, Bob Marley would write "Punky Reggae Party", running through the names of those who took part.

Right on the margins of the Mekons' first chapter, the band's two de facto leaders, Jon Langford and Tom Greenhalgh, launched Three Johns. Drum machine and anti-capitalism. Razor-sharp guitars and lyrics worthy of Karl Marx. The ever-timeless "English White Boy Engineer" alone is enough to sum up their sociological, almost scientific portrait of American society divided along racial class lines.

Between 1987 and 1991, the Mekons effectively churned out an album a year, with a couple of gems among them: So Good It Hurts from 1988 and The Curse Of Mekons from 1991.

The first is marked by lyrics of rebellion, but this time an intimate kind of rebellion. Sometimes the lighting is subdued, yet always backed by cohesive clusters of bass, guitar and drums. With the addition of banjo on a few tracks. The dominant voice is Sarah Corina's, supported by that of Kate Ex (of the Dutch band EX), which would spark a long musical/political partnership. The opening "Revenge" best exemplifies the general distinguishing traits of this beautiful album. Then comes "Fantastic Voyage", a straightforward pop-rock track with a Hammond organ in the background. "Heart Of Stone" features Sally Timms's voice front and center, for pure, distilled rock'n'roll.

The Curse Of Mekons opens with the "world music" of "100% Song", amid harmonica, accordion, hand percussion and Tom Tom Club-style backing vocals. With "Waltz" we're in Pete Seeger-Woody Guthrie territory, no more, no less. Once again the voice belongs to the female side of the band. And so, with this poetry, "the needle runs the full groove", as they used to say.

Also worth remembering is Honky Tonkin' from 1987, an album marked by a kind of country minimalism. Hillbilly meets Violent Femmes and Hank Williams. Here the themes are explicitly political: no to nuclear energy, no to atomic holocaust. "I Can't Find My Money" is the track that defines the style. The Clash of "Sandinista" together with the most exotic side of David Byrne are the stylistic coordinates. "Sleepless Nights", on the other hand, recalls the Paisley Underground of Dream Syndicate and Green on Red. "Hole In The Ground" continues in the same vein, but swerves toward Steel Pool Bath Tube-style cow-punk.

Next comes The Mekons' Rock'n'roll from 1989. Opening the dance is "Memphis, Egypt", with epic guitars and choral vocals straight out of '80s "London's Burning". "Cocaine Lil" is reflective, intimate. Where the previous track's guitars exploded, here they implode, stitching inward alongside an equally matched voice. In "Amnesia", we find top-shelf psychedelic new wave, close to the territory of Teardrop Explodes courtesy of the great Julian Cope. Then comes "Someone": 2:44 minutes of Smiths-Housemartins-style pop-rock, a light, intoxicating little number.

From the mid-Nineties through to the turn of the 2000s, two parallel projects take center stage, both with Jon Langford acting as mentor, always backed by Tom Greenhalgh.

The first, called Waco Brothers, is a band of pure, no-frills country-punk. Based in Chicago, where Langford has lived for years. Nine albums to their name and an astonishing musical freshness. With a string of live shows that leave jaws on the floor. As if Johnny Cash were playing with the Clash of "Sandinista".

Towering above the rest of their output is 2000's "Electric Waco Chair".

The second project is called Pine Valley Cosmonauts. A cover group devoted to country and hillbilly songs and melodies. Featuring the participation of punk legends such as the aforementioned Kat Ex and Alejandro Escovedo (leader of the Nuns, San Francisco's proto-punk outfit, and later of the country-punk band Rank and File from Austin). Six albums to date. Chief among them, the first, "Misery Loves Company: Songs Of Johnny Cash": banjo and harmonica. Heart-wrenching.

Between the two parallel projects, in 1996 the band slipped in a new album under the Mekons name, The Edge Of The World. The opener, "Hello Cruel World", is simply heart-wrenching: Jon Langford's voice is nasal and lyrical at once, the accordion is spot-on, as are the guitar and drums, incisive and precise. Confident, committed rock. "The Letter" showcases a decadent voice, but it's the violin that leads with determination, languid determination. "Forsaken" is a drunken, white "rap" of sorts. The drums remain martial throughout. They sound like the Fall. In "South Of The Border" the old-time cheerfulness and loose-limbed rhythm return: the Dubliners are among us.

In 2000 it was the turn of Journey To The End Of The Night. Three titles: "Last Week Of The War", "Power And Horror" and "Something To Be Scared Of". Almost foreshadowing the following year's 9/11: wars and terror, famine and poverty. The album opens with faint drums that struggle to come in, then do so forcefully alongside a slide guitar, with the bass filling in the space. "Power And Horror" starts off bluesy and reveals itself to be Kinks-like. The ending is rock'n'roll from start to finish, with shameless nods to Bo Diddley.

In 2002 the Mekons returned to the peak of their art with a masterpiece: Oooh! (Out Of Our Heads). Folk is by now the backbone of their music. You can indeed sense the echoes of the two masters, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, already encountered earlier in the flow of the songs and the poetry of the lyrics. Almost a concept album.

2007's Natural follows the same apocalyptic track as "Journey". Humanitarian wars, smart bombs... man subjugating the earth... a whole set of commandments. It opens with "Dark Dark Dark", an irreverent country-punk track in the vein of Violent Femmes-Blasters; then comes "Burning In The Desert Burning", Tinariwen meets Clash, with battle-ready lyrics and relentless bass and drums. And finally "Perfect Mirror", a sad, forlorn ballad: slow-motion drums, bass pushed to the back and velvety guitars.

The passing years haven't changed them. "Do it yourself" remains indelibly the compass guiding their sudden, often erratic movements through musical scores. The lyrics are, as ever, caustic, but often profound too. The free, "guerrilla" spirit endures. So does the urge to mock. But always with intelligence.

These same traits can also be found on 2011's latest, Ancient And Modern. "I Fall Asleep" is a leap back to the "best" Mekons, the ones of Fear And Whiskey, so to speak: Welsh melody and Northern Irish energy, the Pogues grafted onto traditional folk. "Geeshie" is a pub ballad, led by violin, with the voices of Jon Langford and Sally Timms alternating without ever overlapping, so each can stand out and be savored. "Honey Bar" continues in this vein with the addition of choral vocals and traditional instruments: truly enveloping. "The Devil At The Rest", finally, returns to Langford's latest love, country rock.

The run of one of the longest-lived bands of the first wave of British post-punk shows no sign of stopping. "The most revolutionary band in the history of rock'n'roll", as critic Lester Bangs once praised them. And to celebrate their legend, a music documentary was also made, "Revenge Of The Mekons", directed by Joe Angio.

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