The 1985 Project Part 26: Mekons - Fear and Whiskey

This time I wind up liking it more than I remember

Last week I wrote about a band with limited musicianship that turned their lack of prowess in on themselves, producing something that depended on listeners descending into their world. This time, I’ve got a band that was a little further on in learning their instruments but still far from being virtuosos that proudly displayed what they knew and delighted in sharing their expression.

The Mekons had been around for most of nine years before Fear and Whiskey was released – they took a few years off for Jon Langford to form an early version of Three Johns. In 1976, they released an extremely primitive punk answer to the Clash, “Never Been in a Riot.” I had heard that and a couple of b-sides on the compilation album Fast Product which also featured early recordings by Gang of Four and Human League. This means that I was completely unprepared for the sound of Fear and Whiskey, which might as well have been by the Mahavishnu Orchestra compared to the sound of that first single.

It's been a lot of decades since I last listened to this album, which, honestly, didn’t really knock me out at the time. I thought it had a lot more country influence on it than it does. But the three or four country-ish songs, augmented by quite a few more on the next couple of albums, were big infuences on the forthcoming alt-country movement. The Mekons showed that you could get to the heart of country music without precision – the music here is played well, but with a slipperiness not common in country, and a lot more dissonance.

Some of the dissonance comes from Jon Langford’s vocals, which have never been pitch perfect. Some of it comes from Suzie Honeyman’s fiddle, which I’m pretty much convinced is not quite in tune with the rest of the band (and possibly not quite in tune with itself). This creates a ramshackle nature to the music here, aided and abetted by the decision to use either long fade-outs or dropped instruments at the ends of several songs. But primarily it’s the way the players interact, so enthusiastic about what they’re each doing that they don’t care if it fits perfectly with everybody else.

Now, this could have easily been disastrous. You can’t walk on wires with seven or nine people refusing to care what the others are doing unless you’re very lucky. Or unless you have a powerful base holding that wire taut. The secret weapon on Fear and Whiskey, not to mention many other Mekons albums to come, is drummer Steven Goulding. Goulding had been in Graham Parker and the Rumour, was borrowed by Elvis Costello to play the drums on “Watching the Detectives,” and briefly toured with Gang of Four. (I saw that tour, so I know it happened.) The latter affiliation with a band Mekons had known well in their early days together in Leeds was probably how he wound up getting employed with these guys. Though surely the money was much less than he was used to, I like to think he enjoyed the company and the ideas.

This means that no matter how punk the Mekons played, the drums (and bass courtesy of Lu Edmonds) were always in the pocket. You might not have tapped your foot so consistently with a weaker rhythm section. The guitars might wobble a little on a country waltz like “Fitcraft,” but Edmonds and Goulding keep steering them to the beats. And when the band breaks loose on a punk anthem like my favorite song here “Hard to Be Human Again,” the bass and drums can pound 4/4 with the best of them.

I should also mention “Chivalry,” the album opener which introduces the importance of the fiddle to those acquainted with previous Mekons records which decidedly did not have such a thing. What struck me now that I don’t think I noticed at the time was how much it reminded me of the first Orange Juice record from a couple years earlier. Langford is warbling a little like Edwyn Collins, and the guitars are plucking on wide open chords the way that band liked to do. Of course, the fiddle differentiates it considerably, and the bass is much more syncopated. But the longing in Langford’s voice, and the “do-do-do”’s and cries are straight from the Orange Juice playbook. I guess that was something of a commercial move in England, and possibly one of the reasons this record attracted notice in the first place.

Jon Langford is well known for his political songwriting and his attacks on capitalism and consumer culture. There’s not much of that here. Songs are more likely to be about love that doesn’t quite come together or human connection in general that isn’t quite right. The lyrics are never obvious, and generally poetic in their mixture of detail and ambivalence. I certainly didn’t pay attention to the words when I heard this album forty years ago, so it’s interesting to me to see that this is another way Fear and Whiskey is different than I thought it was.

One last difference between reality and memory is that I thought Sally Timms was in the band already. Nope, she joined after this album, and immediately became the perfect foil to Jon Langford as a much clearer and cleaner vocalist. The band would lean harder into the country thing with more cover songs – “Lost Highway” by Leon Payne is the only one on Fear and Whiskey. Then they would drop it and make their masterpiece Rock and Roll a couple years later. But this is the album that started their career as critics darlings, hence the number 26 placement for a record only available in the US as an expensive import.

I’ll call it an 8.5 out of 10.