So it turns out this is a stone-cold masterpiece. Who knew? It's been out of print for years, but now that it's back, it's being called everything from "a good set of drinking songs" to "the seed that sprouted alt-country" to "the greatest rock album in history." Fear and Whiskey was the first great statement of "shambolic punk" band the Mekons, and yes, it is as great as all their rabid fans have always said (though "the greatest rock album in history" is, of course, a bit of a stretch).
As I was digging through my rock library to figure out what defines a classic, I found an essay by Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate, listing his top criteria for what makes a great rock album. The most important factor, he argued, was "the potential of falling apart at any moment": not just that the recording sounds rough around the edges, but that the entire band could have careened off the rails at any time. The Mekons, circa 1985, fit that description wonderfully. Though this album took months of planning, Fear and Whiskey sounds as chaotic and spontaneous as any great night at a dance hall full of the reek of stale beer. Just like a live show, almost all you can hear through the record's tinny sound are Steve Goulding's drums-- pounding out a dance beat crossed with a military tattoo-- and Susie Honeyman's fiddle, soaring above, pretty but ragged. Singer/guitarists Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford bellow, cheer and grumble through the noise. They sing about booze, they sing about politics, and most of all, they sing about despair: Greenhalgh opens "Chivalry" with, "I was out late the other night/ Fear and whiskey kept me going," while the heroic tune from the violin keeps him upright.
But let's move past the drinking and look at what it stands for: failure and camaraderie. The Mekons were born in '77 but were all but defunct by the mid-80s; they reunited to play benefit shows for miners during the strike of '84-85. As "non-aligned lefties," the band raged against the Thatcher administration, and watched the suffering of miners who were on strike for a year and then went back to work in defeat. But against that backdrop, Fear and Whiskey doesn't so much as stumble. Every disaster turns into a victory anthem, from Greenhalgh and Langford shouting through "Hard to Be Human Again," to "Abernant 1984/85," which is a glorious waltz no matter how bleak the lyrics ("They seek to destroy us/ How much more is there left to lose?").
The music is a mess of influences united on the bones of punk music. The Mekons always subscribed to the "anything goes" rules of Britain's "Class of '77," and Fear and Whiskey is their most famous example: this was the record where they started to assimilate country music. It was a radical move in mid-80s Britain, not least because of the right-wing politics that were associated with the style. Musicologists have labelled this the father of alt-country, that bastard offspring of indie rock and country/western-- though for as much as you hear it on "Darkness and Doubt" (complete with a John Wayne reference), or the cover of Hank Williams' hit "Lost Highway," country is just one of the styles jammed in here, along with English folk, Leeds punk, and whatever else was at hand. Anyone who expects scenic Americana will stop short at the second song, "Trouble Down South," a weird mini-drama that would bring a lesser album to its knees: Ken Lite narrates some kind of a military advance over a reggae-inflected drum machine and a wheezing accordion, while soprano Jaqui Callis struggles to hit her highest notes. As far as it fits here at all, it's to force the listener to accept that the Mekons are ready and willing to do whatever they want.
No matter how scattershot the first few songs sound, the second half of the album justifies everything. With a "proper" band assembled, these last five songs were "recorded and mixed one fine spring day in 1985," and they make up one of the most spontaneous, exciting and perfect album sides ever. For fourteen minutes, from "Flitcraft" to "Lost Highway," the Mekons don't touch the ground. This is music that is effortlessly, spontaneously great, with a massive beat that sweeps along grim lyrics like, "We know that for many years there's been no country here."
But it's right near the end that they play the crowning song, the most perfect part of the album: "Last Dance," a pop song that sounds like it had never been played before that day but where every note falls in place, down to that throwaway guitar solo and Honeyman's beautiful fiddle, so bright it could make you want to cry. The narrator sings about the end of the night, when the music's winding down and it's time to search the room for someone to take home. The lyrics are resigned to failure, but then there are two lines in the middle-- "So beautiful, you were waltzing/ Little frozen rivers all covered in snow"-- sung by a man whose desire stretches his capacity for eloquence: he could have just seen the woman he'll marry. And he probably goes home alone.
The Mekons didn't stand on the brink of collapse because they chose to; they accepted the knowledge that everything could be ripped from their hands. The Thatcher administration could declare war on the people; the miners could lose the strike. You could get one great night out of hundreds of bad ones, and for those fleeting moments you grab whatever you can-- even if it's just a handful of rowdy old songs.
