Mekons - Natural (Quarterstick)

Natural betrays the Mekons UK punk-era origins and – quite frankly – if somebody had tried to pass this off as a collection of recently discovered out-takes for the unreleased sides 7 & 8 of the Clash’s Sandinista! I think I might have bought it. Older, wiser, and certainly more bucolic than Strummer, et al, c. 1980, but fast forward from cold war to global warming and the Mekons work is still infused with the same sense of urgency that put the Mekons on the front lines contra Thatcher during the miners’ strike. There is little of the pastoral in the 12 ‘rural’ themed songs on Natural. I think it’s fair to say the Mekons have a deeply ambivalent attitude toward both the country and the town. These songs are written in the space in between, where the ‘old fox is eating from the bin’ and Jet fighters swoop loud and low during a hillside ramble. However, the record is littered with reminders that we are only a power blackout away from a potent primordial darkness in which ‘twisted trees sing, dark, dark, dark.’ Campfire songs for the end of oil.