Me

he Mekons spent the '90s skittering from garage-rock record to scatological art project to drum-machine ditty to nearly commercial album and back again. ME incorporates nearly all of that into what may be their most accessible album of the decade, a collection of ragged harmonies, chanted choruses and technological dabbling that sounds something like Lou Reed and some female drinking buddies fronting Chumbawamba. The lyrics are a sometimes plaintive, sometimes mocking and sometimes silly barrage of advertising slogans, X-rated sex-talk, self-love and self-loathing that seem to catalogue the modern world's ways of isolating and disembodying its inhabitants.
As if to suggest we are all dogs lapping at whatever morsel of hope we can reach, "Narrative" is told from the point of view of an actual canine. The list of ways to avoid reality as noted in "Men United" advances from drink and drugs to sex, money and religion. You can also avoid reality with the song's repetitive yet irresistible melody, or with a sad and boozy humdinger like "Come And Have A Go If You Think You're Hard Enough", which would make a perfect fight song for Charles Bukowski and his pals.|

After a four-year hiatus -- not counting the many solo projects, collaborations, and other odd detours that filled the gap -- the Mekons return to action with Me, another sterling addition to their catalog. Jon Langford's boozy adventures with the Waco Brothers and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts have clearly influenced tracks like "Gin & It" and "Whisky Sex Shack," while "Tourettes" and "Belly to Belly" are just as snotty as anything the band unleashed two decades earlier; indeed, while Me doesn't really add anything new to the Mekons canon, it also doesn't take anything away -- even going on the two-decade mark, they remain the truest representation of the punk spirit around. ~ Jason Ankeny