Fear and Whiskey

"...it's a teenager's curse.":
Down in the deepest, darkest and ickiest parts of your belly there live little elves. There are good elves and bad elves. The bad elves represent all the bad things: your secret hidden desires, your sinful guilty pleasures, your slothful and idle inclinations towards pleasure and enjoyment (these elves play country music, are paunchy, and sport strange facial hairs). The good elves represent all the things that attempt to keep you straight: your lingering regrets, your beleaguered conscience, your rose-colored pipe-dreams and aspirations (these elves, constantly anxious and fretful about they day everything ends, cannot sit still and so play every kind of music imaginable; they look like bald-headed straight edge/post-rock kids except they, you know, laugh once in a while). The bad elves and the good elves in your belly hate each other. Every once in a while they get together (buy each other a few drinks) and then fight fight fight. What happens when they do is exceptional, it sounds like a battle and it sounds like a dance. This (minus the goofy "elves" nonsense) is what "Fear and Whiskey", and Mekons in general, sounds like. Three cheers! Buy this one, and then, with that big goofy grin on your face, get your hands on everything else the Mekons have ever done. And stop reading music criticism.

Classic, But Forced 5 As Scale Is Calibrated For Suck Ups:
I am a perfectionist so I don't think any album would get a 5 from me, but here a five is given out like free tickets to a minor league hockey game. Basically if the album has something that draws you in with anything special it garners a 5. This definitely qualifies. On first listen it is rather subtle. Nothing really jumps out and that is probably one reason it never sold well. Add to that the group is called the Mekons, they never get record company promotion, the songs have a sound that can not be classified to fit a radio format, they are thought of as an alternative group so radio probably wouldn't have even played a song like "With Or Without You" if they said it was made by the Mekons, an alternative group with a very small following. The album does weave its way into your brain and every song becomes powerful. You begin to wonder how others have't made this a bigger cult classic. I do hate spoken word songs and this has two. This alone brings this classic release down from perfect. I mean why include even one. These never work. The cover version is great, but I also think covers, no matter their excellence detract from the artistic value of the album as it shows a group got writers block and the album is not their vision alone. That said the rest is brilliant and the 3 filler songs can easily be skipped. Plus one song is only filler because of my cover bias and actually works excellent as the album closer. I am also very thankful I have the Original Sin version. I can make a perfect album of originals easily and add the covers as bonus tracks, what they should be done for. Finally the record executives that decided to no longer include bonus tracks (...). I am thankful I bought Original Sin and have an awesome selection of bonus tracks. The only negative about getting Original Sin is whenever they repackage something they seem to give it a religious title, which is annoying. He took away 9 songs. Have record companies decided they will no longer offer special releases that spoil us. They just rereleased the Jazz Butchers' CD Scandal In Bohemia and left off the brilliant Sex And Travel. They don't want to give us too much. More proof. Fear & Whiskey does belong in any record collection no matter you taste.

goin out tonight:
i was less than a year old when this came out but that doesn't stop me from liking it. it's a lott better than later stuff i think, like rock 'n roll etc.

Deserves its status--one of the best ever:
Rock 'n' Roll has its partisans, but this one edges it out for me, on the strength of what might be the strongest opening track ever, "Chivalry." Don't pay any mind to talk of filler--this album is tight. The first half does have two (semi-)spoken pieces, which can take getting used to. But they open up after a while. And side B may be the strongest side on any album ever, the cover song included. Imagine stomping and fiddling at the darkness, as it swells up around and inside you, with fear and whiskey your only weapons. Stare into the abyss long enough and it stares back into you. But hurl yourself into the abyss and it just might vomit you back out. The Original Sin configuration was to be preferred, only because you got all the extra goodies (track them down if you can). But this way you at least get the key bits and the original cover art. Buy now, before Quarterstick gets bought up by Rupert Murdoch or shutdown by Homeland Security and this one vanishes like Rock 'n' Roll has....

A truly brilliant and inventive record. HOLDS UP EVER SO WELL!:
I think a true test of truly transcendent art in any medium is does it seem dated now? For instance, some of these recent "from the archives" Dylan releases sound like they could have been recorded yesterday. I used to LOVE Roxy Music in their day but I was recently listening to AVALON and - though I still like it - it sounds a little "of its time" to me. It doesn't mean I can't still appreciate it. FEAR AND WHISKEY. I am not even too sure it was appreciated by many back in 1985 but who cares. It sounds wonderful now. It's sloppy and drunken and all over the place. It's inspired music. It's a feast. It makes me renew my vows to great alternative music and so-called indie rock, to rock n roll in general. I love how the Mekons never cared about sticking to a genre. I see all of these bands that Pitchfork and hipster blogs and zines support and the Mekons so hold their own as a shining example of paving their own path. I hear all of that stuff about this record "inventing" alt-country. Maybe. Still sounds like the Mekons to me. And it probably did invent that genre...in a Mekons way. I am not even too sure if I hear that many bands today that sound like the Mekons (as I do with, say, the Replacements or, obviously, Gang of Four and a bunch of brooding eighties Brit bands. You know which bands I mean). But does it matter? I could wish...but I know for sure that the Mekons will never get elected in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They will probably never really come back (Come back? Were they here?) into vogue. But this record is so brilliant and fresh. I have to think that some future Jeff Tweedy or Jack White or Stephen Malkmus or Neutral Milk Hotel....is going to say that Mekons were (are...they will probably still be around. Give us another thirty!!) a seminal band. I think they are. Listen to this record. It was from Mars then. And it is still is. That is part of the greatness.