16. Another One

The Mekons (B-side of “Snow” single – Red Rhino, 1980);
composed by Andy Corrigan, Tom Greenhalgh, Mary Jenner, Jon Langford, Kevin Lycett, and Mark White

Before Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford revived the moniker for the mordant anarchist collective that is still scratching its own head to this day, the Mekons were a band that epitomized my secret theory of postpunk: punk itself never really existed or happened – and there is no music that truly belongs in that category and no other – because punk was really just a theorized gravitational mega-collapse to which a lot of clever people pretended to react. Postpunk was all there was. The Mekons’ first two singles were like voicemails you could never bring yourself to erase. On the strength of the cult following they attracted, Mekons made an album for Virgin with a cover depicting a chimpanzee not quite typing The Merchant of Venice, and audio to match. This song is from a single comprising the opening and closing tracks of what was ostensibly their second album – vestigially released as The Mekons in 1980 and reissued under various nonsense titles since. This closer is dub taken to absolutes – overdriven bass, echoing guitar lines, and narcoleptic drums, and an even more echoey lyrics about a fracturing romance (maybe) and an old man down the street apparently dreaming the whole thing up.

Note: 25 secular essays about 25 songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day during Advent (approximately).