Mekons: Tiny Desk Concert

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Lars Gotrich | August 12, 2025 The world is doomed, but at least we've got the Mekons. For nearly 50 years, the British punk band has always done things its own way — out of stubbornness, survival or maybe a little bit of both. That snaggled-toothed sneer and smile, with some bittersweet sentimentality swirled in, can soundtrack any moment, but especially when everything feels fraught. At the opening of this Tiny Desk concert, we're taken back 40 years to one of the band's many crossroads. Mekons' 1985 album, Fear and Whiskey, recognized that traditional country music was just as rowdy, randy and wayward as punk, and inadvertently pioneered the alt-country phenomenon. The joyous and desperate "Last Dance" is a song about falling in love during wartime — at the Tiny Desk, its past themes reverberate into the present. The middle of the set features two songs from this year's Horror: "War Economy," a post-punk-y throwback to the days when the Mekons would borrow Gang of Four's instruments to write and rehearse, and then "Sanctuary," which, as my colleague Ann Powers wrote, is "a children's rhyme that reveals itself as an elegy." Susie Honeyman, whose violin steadies the storm of Mekons, takes a rare vocal lead, her sing-songy voice like a wisp in a billowing wind. Another classic from Fear and Whiskey bookends the Mekons' Tiny Desk. "Hard to Be Human Again" is a down-but-not-defeated barn burner that nonetheless needs to be sung loudly and in the company of fellow comrades who

Published 2025-08-12 · Watch on YouTube ↗
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