** The Mekons

ME

(Quarterstick)

Now that Chumbawamba have made the airwaves safe for veteran English co-ed punk/anarchist collectives, it was only a matter of time before the resurfacing of the Mekons, who've been on solo-project sabbatical since 1994. Noting that the '90s are merely the '80s beneath a thin façade of irony, the band have released an album whose apparent celebration of the current era's narcissism, materialism, and hedonism is frosted with a shallow layer of satirical cleverness and a thick layer of that electronica stuff the kids seem to like these days. Whereas the band used to be the aural equivalent of a Mike Leigh movie (a quaintly British mix of working-class resentment, bitter wit, and quiet desperation), this CD is more Stanley Kubrick: intelligent, even trenchant, and technically accomplished, but often emotionally enervated. Don't worry, aging leftist hipster fans: that old Mekons sound you love -- whiskey-soaked vocals, lyrical fiddle playing, sloppy guitars -- is still there, buried deep in the mix, from which it emerges every so often, shaking the sleep from its shaggy head, remembering a faint dream of what it was like, once, to rock out.

-- Gary Susman