broncogallerymusic

Reviews:

In 1985, the Mekons were punk also-rans who’d made a handful of inchoate,difficult to find albums that were popular among a handful of rock critics andfew others. It’s tempting to say that nothing changed with the releasethat year of Fear and Whiskey: until recent months, the tiny horde whocared could find their catalog mainly through rigorous secondhand shopping.But Fear and Whiskey remains one of the most unique records ever made, a fierce,funny attempt by an unkempt group of English anarchists to escape the urbanhorrors wrought by Thatcherism. Their solution? Hitting the bars and bashingout a raucous version of the American country music that led them there.

The results were rough-hewn, bewildered, bleary and immensely likeable, likeunexpectedly meeting someone at a bar and ending up getting drunk and talkingwith them all night. Mixing tear-in-beer laments (“Chivalry,” “LostDance”) with eerie spoken-word pieces (“Trouble Down South,”“Psycho Cupid [Danceband on the Edge of Time]”) and flat-out rockers(“Hard to Be Human Again”), the album manages to sound resigned tofate and determined to spit in its eye both at once. It ends with a cover ofthe Leon Payne-written Hank Williams standard “Lost Highway” thatsounds like it couldn’t walk a straight line down the middle of one; bythe time it occurs, the song sounds like the only possible thing that couldfinish this album off. Lots of alt-country artists have since tried to top Fearand Whiskey, but nobody’s done it yet.