Click to listen to Mekons' 'Geeshie'
Barely famous after 30 years of damning the marketplace, Mekons fear no genre. They all but invented country punk in the mid-Eighties, but dabbled in everything from indie-rock thunder to baffling electronic albums. Ancient & Modern, their first in four years, is meaty and grizzled folk rock. Sally Timms’ near-whisper strides through the cabaret-jazzy "Geeshie"; Tom Greenhalgh's pipes anchor melancholy strummers; and semi-leader Jon Langford leaps around the stage ("Space in Your Face"). The title track is almost a play on nostalgia's seductive power, complete with violin and singalong verses about sailing away. After all these years, you still want to join them.
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