Pitchfork

Screw the Pistols: 2002 year marks 25 years of Mekons. They've been slinging their backwoods punk cowboy music more-or-less steadily for over two decades. Sure, their last record, Journey to the End of the Night, sounded a little mellow, like they were growing resigned to their age-- from its slow tunes and gloomy title, you'd think they were picking which belongings to take with them to the nursing home, and getting ready to put the cat to sleep. But suddenly, here they are with an anniversary record that, while not quite as wild as the ones they made in their prime, sounds raucous and brutally alive.

Recorded in their adopted home of Chicago, the ill-titled OOOH! is a return to textbook Mekons-- from gracefully shambling country to deep-beating tribal rhythms, by way of good, clean rock 'n roll. Susie Honeymoon's fiddle whistles and squeaks as she opens the album; Jon Langford and Tom Greenhalgh share roadhouse guitars, and Steve Goulding's drums crack the floorboards. And it's full of detail: the birdlike vocal harmonies fluttering over the end of "Take His Name in Vain"; the thick moans of "I am a stonehead" that open the last track; the squirrely guitars and violin on "Bob Hope & Charity," and Sally Timm's strange narratives and poetry.

Singing lead are Langford, vocal cords still sounding like twisted roots on a stunted tree, and Timms, who's especially great with her weary vocals on "Hate Is the New Love." But they also make everyone else sing: up to a dozen people, including the whole band, plus local country chanteuse Kelly Hogan and pop queen Edith Frost. Every big chorus kicks off with a raucous singalong or choir-like swells, and hearing everybody in the studio bellow together may be the best part of the album.

These eleven songs-- all new, aside from old-time weeper "Lone Pilgrim"-- cross straight rock and country with shambling performances and weirdo primitivist lyrics. The band opens with the stomping, militant "Thee Olde Trip to Jerusalem" ("The seed of the devil lives on in men"), and then switch religions to the voodoo weirdness and ritual-rock guitars of "Dancing in the Head." And "Winter" lumbers happily along with lyrics about all the crazy pagan shit you can do in the shut-in months: "I saw the belly of the beast/ It was warm and open/ Blood lay all around/ I crawled inside." Yeah, those Chicago winters are a bitch.

But the Mekons do just as well at slower tempos, with aching ballads ("Hate is the New Love") and the warm country tones of "Stonehead." And unlike many bands in their later years, when they do choose to slow down a little, it doesn't detract from their delivery-- they still come off powerful, angry, and inventive. Not many of these new songs are likely to make the band's canon (though none are less than solid); there's nothing new, crazy or different. It's just their best record in years. And if they continue to inspire each other at these levels, the next quarter-century should treat them well.