Punk Rock

Let’s say you’re the Mekons. You decide to re-record an album’s worth of your old tunes, maybe to shine some light on your overlooked, pioneering alt-punk forays. Naturally, you’ll clean up the production, really punch the songs up the way technology and your budget wouldn’t allow in the early days, right? Well, maybe not. Most of the tracks on Punk Rock are as messy as when they were first recorded. Songs like the furious “I’m So Happy” and “The Building” are overrun with static and highlighted by Jon Langford’s hoarse shouting, his youthful rage now tempered by a timeworn twinge of humor. Elsewhere, the folk and country elements of “Corporal Chalkie” and “Work All Week” are accentuated, the benefit of being played by a band that now actually knows how to play. Ultimately, the whole lo-fi aesthetic makes sense: The Mekons’ version of punk rock was always more an attitude than a musical style. In the late ’70s it was the voice of underdogs and losers, and as the Mekons see it, it still is.