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**Fear And Whiskey - The Mekons ★★★★☆**

In the annals of post-punk history, few albums capture the beautiful chaos of a band in creative flux quite like The Mekons' *Fear And Whiskey*. Released in 1985, this sprawling, ambitious record finds the Leeds collective at their most adventurous, trading their art-school angularity for something altogether more primal and intoxicating. It's an album that sounds like it was recorded in a frontier saloon at closing time, all whiskey-soaked wisdom and revolutionary fervour.

The Mekons had already established themselves as uncompromising iconoclasts by the mid-80s. Formed in 1977 from the ashes of the Leeds art scene, they'd spent their early years perfecting a brand of confrontational punk that owed as much to situationist politics as it did to three-chord thrash. But by 1985, something had shifted. The original punk moment was dead, Thatcherism was tightening its grip, and the band found themselves drawn to older, more rootsy forms of rebellion. American country music, with its tales of heartbreak and economic hardship, suddenly seemed like the perfect vessel for their discontent.

*Fear And Whiskey* represents the Mekons' full embrace of this unlikely marriage between punk attitude and country instrumentation. It's a record that shouldn't work – the idea of British post-punks playing honky-tonk should be laughable – yet somehow it coheres into something genuinely moving. The key lies in the band's refusal to treat country music as pastiche. Instead, they approach it with the same political urgency that had always driven their work, using its narrative conventions to explore themes of alienation, capitalism, and the grinding realities of working-class life.

The album opens with "Chivalry," a ramshackle anthem that immediately establishes the record's boozy, defiant tone. Tom Greenhalgh's vocals are wonderfully ragged, somewhere between Johnny Rotten and Hank Williams, while the band crashes around him with gleeful abandon. It's followed by "Trouble Down South," which layers Susie Honeyman's mournful violin over a lurching rhythm section, creating something that sounds like The Clash jamming with Gram Parsons in a particularly seedy dive bar.

The album's centrepiece is undoubtedly "Hard To Be Human Again," a seven-minute epic that finds the band at their most expansive. Built around a hypnotic, circular riff, it's a meditation on survival and dignity in an increasingly dehumanising world. Jon Langford's guitar work is particularly impressive here, weaving between country picking and post-punk dissonance with remarkable fluidity. Meanwhile, "Last Dance" serves as the album's most straightforward country pastiche, complete with steel guitar and heartbreak lyrics, yet it never feels like mere mimicry thanks to the underlying tension in the performance.

Elsewhere, "Darkness And Doubt" showcases the band's ability to marry political commentary with personal confession, while the closing "Lost Highway" (not the Hank Williams song) sends the album out on a note of weary resignation that feels entirely earned. Throughout, the production maintains a deliberately rough-hewn quality that suits the material perfectly – this isn't music for the stereo system, it's music for the jukebox in the corner of a roadhouse at 2am.

*Fear And Whiskey* wasn't a commercial success upon release, but its influence has proven remarkably enduring. It predated the alt-country movement by nearly a decade, pointing the way toward artists like Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, and Drive-By Truckers. More importantly, it demonstrated that punk's revolutionary spirit could be channelled through any musical form, as long as the commitment remained genuine.

The Mekons themselves have continued to mine this particular seam for nearly four decades since, becoming elder statesmen of the alternative country scene while never losing their political edge. They remain a band's band, beloved by critics and fellow musicians but forever operating just outside the mainstream – exactly where they belong.

*Fear And Whiskey* stands as their masterpiece, a document of a band discovering new ways to rage against the machine. It's messy, heartfelt, and utterly unique – the sound of punk rock growing up without selling out. In an era of increasingly sanitised rebellion, it remains as vital and necessary as ever.