POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rock From the ‘Cursed’ Mekons May Still Be Blessed

For a band that titled its last album “The Curse of the Mekons” (part of a surly, funny tradition of mythologizing the group’s own lucklessness), the Mekons certainly seem to be living it out.

After a predictably brief stint with a major U.S. label, the aforementioned album of last year became available only as an import, and Thursday night one of the world’s better remaining rock ‘n’ roll bands found itself playing to a half-full house at the Whisky after the witching hour.

The English band’s music, however, still seems to be blessed. The short assessment is that the Mekons are basically the Clash for grown-ups, but with a fiddle, prominent women members, wicked humor and a bad attitude that didn’t dodder out with the dawning of New Wave. The long one is that founding members Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford have an effective Strummer/Jones-style interplay, putting thick Leeds accents to aggressively eccentric polemic-rockers, with third singer Sally Timms reinforcing the redoubtable tunefulness throughout.

Violinist Susie Honeyman is on leave this swing and replaced by a ringer, and the rhythm section is new, but everything historically reliable about the sound--chiefly, the blend of folk melodism in the fiddle riffs with the quintessential guitar-band sound--remained firmly in place.

So did the sardonic stage banter, in the usual left-of-topical song intros to choices like “Only Darkness Has the Power” (“except for Bill (Clinton)!”) and “I Am Crazy” (“Perot’s theme song, we’re told, but we didn’t write it for him, honest”). The group also premiered a few new tunes from an album due in January on an indie label through a major distributor, sounding almost downright commercial in the process. They better watch out or they’ll have to title an album “Good Fortune of the Mekons” yet.