Deserted

"The legendary band's first full-length in eight years is a besotted concept album about the desert, once again revealing the depth of their imagination ... Rarely do the Mekons get quite as loose as they do on Deserted, alternating between arid, nocturnal atmosphere that seems to emanate from Susie Honeyman's fiddle and moments of near hysteria, as though their sun-baked brains have gone haywire. These songs take their time to wander about, even getting lost in the vast expanse - sometimes a little too lost, as on the rambling "Mirage." But even that song reveals the Mekons' versatility and imagination. There is an intoxicating beauty to the harshness of the desert, an inspiration to be drawn from the hardiness of the life found there - and that pretty much describes this unkillable band".

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""Deserted" is full of broad but sparsely populated sonic landscapes, interrupted by episodes of chaos and hallucinatory beauty, and shifting patterns of instrumental textures and individual and massed vocals. Much of the material was written in the studio, and the results have a playful but daring sense of adventure, as well as a smart, mildly addled sense of awe at the beauty and danger that surrounds them in the arid heat. "Deserted" is less explicitly political than one might expect from the Mekons (...), but the wit, the smarts, and the mingled twang and skronk of the music could be the work of no other band, and this is their most immediately engaging album in 20 years ... As fresh and challenging as ever".

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"The Mekons reboot their Anglo-American punk-country-dub ... California's High Desert is heavy with rock history ... Now The Mekons - those zany, erudite and beloved British punk-country-reggae-rock survivors - join the processional with "Deserted". Recorded near Joshua Tree, the LP loses itself in the desert and finds timely survival metaphors everywhere ".

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