I hope that none of you ever experiences the agony of reviewing a band whose discography rivals The Fall’s. Between Mekons’ first release, Fast Product, and their most recent, Natural, there's approximately 28 years’ worth of music to overview. 28 years. 18 albums. There’s some cruel prescience in the origin of their name (The Mekon, a 1950s comic character whose minuscule, atrophied body was punctuated by a massive, swollen head) and the throbbing headache felt after listening to 18 consecutive albums. 28 condensed years of music is just about enough time for the cells to start collecting in your brain, for thousands of them to form spongy white tumors overlapping strategically in to a cantaloupe-headed comic book homage. Send me through a CAT scan. Show me that my skull has deteriorated into a perfect representation of “I <3 Mekons” cover art. Tell me my ribosomes have been replaced by the first quarter of lyrics from “Never Been in a Riot.”
Analyzing something this contextually heavy becomes a process of eliminating useless information. After all, what can really be said about prolific bands? They grew up, their style changed, band members left, they grabbed new instruments. Now and then, I do wish you readers could come on this side of music journalism. It’s baffling how easily reviewing can degrade into something woefully similar to liner-note biographies. As you read this, a lost writer has introduced their 10-page Mekons press release to a Cuisinart. Press “On” and keep a glue stick nearby. Paste and dry. The review you’re glancing through right now is very likely the result of that process. This is a process of erroneously stacking information and leaving only a single thread of actual critical opinion in this compost of literary crap.
Is this the tradition a reviewer is meant to follow? Let me cut your reading to a bare minimum and condense Natural into a sentence:
[Analysis]: A1,2 bit3 c4l5oy6ing.
It’s unnecessary to say that most prolific bands will suffer significantly from comparisons to their previous work. With the weight of multiple releases, new albums become the sum of a band’s past; that’s the typical process of hermeneutic interpretation. But the significance of a review lies in the extent to which it can be simplified. Most reviews I’ve read of Natural drown the critical aspect in statements like “punk going country” and “celebrating over 25 years of Pop.” But this isn’t contextualizing a genre; this stenches of biographical platitudes. Journalism shouldn’t be as formulaic as the music it often criticizes, especially when that music is Mekons’ newest album.
The overriding element of Natural is the band's sense of experimentation, merging punk with semi-transcendentalist folk. But while Mekons are a punk band who have reached toward country roots, the merging of genres becomes an expectation, and the act of ‘experimental’ merging alone becomes as persistent a structure as the critical banalities of its reviews. The criticism devolves with every strum into a single sentence of actual analysis, while words are sporadically thrown onto the literary scaffolding of press-kit factoids.
1 Referring to their album Natural, the first CD of new material since the 2002 critically acclaimed “OOOH!”
2 Came into being during the musical reign of groups from The Clash and Joy Division to Gang of Four.
3 Signed by Virgin based primarily upon their 1977 single “Never Been In A Riot,” an astute reply to The Clash's “White Riot.”
4 Exemplifies an indie aesthetic in their aptitude for experimentation, utilizing diverse instruments and disinterest in rabid commercial success. Mekons refused to tour for a period of time, only to return to live gigs in support of a miner’s strike.
5 Natural sinks into its roots as punk/folk propagators as exemplified in 1985's Fear and Whiskey, in which they broke from their original brand of structurally standardized punk with the use of steel guitars and an overall Hank Williams-inspired aesthetic.
6 Finding a thematic comfort zone in something that can be best depicted by a Spinal Tap-ian jig around a miniature Stonehenge, Mekons would make Thoreau proud with their echoing hillside chants about rustic heartlands and dark druid homelands.