#mekons

Horrorble arises out of a four-decade collaboration with Maimone; he and the Mekons met on a 1988 UK tour and he played bass for the band on another 1991 European tour. In 2015, Maimone was mixing a batch of live tunes that later turned up on Horror. A statement from the Mekons explained, “We had a feeling they might have some sort of secret double life. So much potential and split decisions that could’ve gone either way. Tony was the man to get his tools out and see what lurked beneath to make it truly Horrorble.”

These are all ghost stories at heart, none more so than the closer, “Before the Ice Age” which takes shape like an ectoplasm out of the thump of drum, a languid guitar, a trembling organ tone. Sally Timms’ whispery voice, high and sing-song, makes a tentative path through ominous, unreal landscape. “All the lies I’ve been told come around to taunt, shapeless ghosts coil, writhe and creep, frozen with a fear that will never learn to speak,” she intimates in a sonic landscape that dwarfs her tiny form. It’s chilling and beautiful.

The dub element is subtle and atmospheric mostly, a matter of echoing bass lines and vaulting sonic space, but it takes a more literal form in Maimone’s version of “Mudcrawlers.” The song includes a raspy, impassioned cameo from Benji Webbe of the UK dancehall band Skindred, which connects the Mekons’ memorialization of the Irish Potato Famine to the ravages of third-world oppression. It’s one of the best of the re-imaginations, worth the cost of the ticket all on its own.

You might have your doubts about whether you need a song-by-song dub remix of the last Mekons’ album, whose acerbic poetry and untethered rock energy stood on its own. And possibly need is a strong word. You don’t really. But you might enjoy this anyway, regardless of whether you heard the source material a lot or not at all.