Mekons "Natural"

It seems like every big album in the world came out on August 21...but don't let the Mekons new one get lost in the shuffle. It's pretty wonderful. Here's a bit from my PopMatters review, which went up today:It's been five years since the Mekons' last album of new material, the grand scale, countrified OOOH!. That would be a monumental pause, and maybe even a death knell, for most bands. But for a band as stubbornly persistent, as willfully still-here-despite-obstacles as the Mekons, it's just a pause for breath. They have, after all, made 16 albums since their conception in 1977. Survivors of the first wave of UK post-punk, they are among the minority of similar, vintage bands who have not reunited lately...because they've never really been apart. Not that it's always been easy. The Mekons have weathered every kind of label perfidy, and shrugged off every sort of trendy expectations. They've turned out eccentric oddities and acknowledged masterpieces with the same level of conviction. You get the sense that they have, pretty much, done exactly what they felt like for the last 30 years, damn the consequences, screw the economics. In Natural's case, that meant getting back to basics, gathering "in the wilds of the English countryside," and by the sound of it, sticking to well-tried instruments, song structures, and lyrical material. There's a rusty patina on songs like "The Old Fox," its shivery harmonica curling like campfire smoke around slow-changing guitar chords. The lyrics have an almost Aesop's fable quality to them, a sense of one thing standing in for another. The imagery of an old fox "eating from the bin" is, for instance, specific and memorable in itself, but also a metaphor for aging, obsolescence and the approach of death. The melody and structure could hardly be simpler; yet there's a dreamlike, symbolic glow to it, especially when echoic voices rise from the background. (More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/43982/the-mekons-natural/)