One of the bands whose sound seems to define the appeal of the skewed-and-scuzzy pop of the PNKSLM label for me, Black Mekon are back. The duo's newest record, The Lumpiness of Demand, serves up the sort of nastiness that makes rock-and-roll a still-dangerous proposition in 2020. And in a year with death hanging over all our shoulders, sometimes we need a little fiery nastiness to give us a reason to rock out.
"Feeling Good" opens with a set of riffs that suggests The Scientists, but the rougher "Don't Die" is The Cramps as played by aliens. This is supremely wrong, but delicious! Elsewhere, "Mekon Do Mekon See" is more primitive, a proto-blues-stomp heard through a rusty transistor radio, while "Sick and Low" is biker rock from a Sixties Corman flick amped up for a new century. So much of The Lumpiness of Demand is full of this sort of thing, the mix of Nuggets-style garage rock and No NYC misanthropy served up hot on this album, perhaps the best yet of the Black Mekon crew. And hearing a song like "Black Mekon is Your Daddy" makes this all even better, the band revealing a wit that takes this whole unsavory enterprise in another direction, and makes a listener like me want to rave even more about this buzzing, scuzzy stuff.
The Lumpiness of Demand is out now via PNKSLM.
More details on Black Mekon via the band's official Facebook page, or the PNKSLM Facebook page.
[Photo: PNKSLM]