Mekons: Journey To The End Of The Night

The British punk explosion triggered the rise of bands from two disparate sources: the working class (The Clash, The Sex Pistols) and art school (Gang Of Four, Wire). The members of The Mekons, who've never disguised their intellectualism, clearly fall into the latter camp. Oddly, while they've often been no more than a loose collective, they've outlasted virtually all their peers. Perhaps that's because the band has not only kept itself open to new ideas, but also remained adept at pulling them off. Well, usually. The Mekons' last few albums have landed on the artier end of the spectrum, with the songs periodically failing at the expense of concepts from lesbian pirates to consumerism. But at its height, the group infused its songs with melodies as strong as their meanings, resulting in a string of classic, riveting albums—Fear And Whiskey, The Edge Of The World, So Good It Hurts, Rock 'N' Roll, Curse Of The Mekons—that incorporate everything from country to reggae to techno to pub-rock. The new Journey To The End Of The Night reconvenes the band's classic line-up (Tom Greenhalgh, Jon Langford, Sally Timms, Rico Bell, Steve Goulding, Suzie Honeyman, Lü Edmonds, and Sarah Corina) for an album that not only stands with The Mekons' best but finds the group adopting an altogether new and different tone. From its start, Journey To The End Of The Night is subdued and mournful, almost elegiac, a curious change of pace for a band that rarely whispers its messages. Slow but never plodding, these new songs present personal themes of love, loss, and loneliness, all composed and executed with restraint that recalls The Band more than The Clash. The disc is populated by characters cloaked in darkness—prostitutes, covert lovers, wandering souls, and mysterious figures in the shadows—each touched by lingering sadness, as if resigned to the fact that the world is ending around them and there's nothing they can do. It's a surprising response to the times, a stare-down with the apocalypse, but The Mekons' dark accomplishment is an eerie and moving reminder that things can always take a turn for the worse.