The first Mekons album in eight years grips us with force - anarchic lust, defiant serenity and weird ideas. The Mekons, with their success story of more than 40 years, are the musical model of versatile consistency. With roots in the English punk of the 1970s and via branches and paths through country, alternative rock, dub and folk, they have developed into one of the most important roots rock formations of our time. "Deserted" is the first studio album of the British-American band in eight years. Carried by calm carelessness and anarchic lust for the new, the songs were developed from the ideas of the (last two) founding members Jon Langford and Tom Greenhalgh, but were only finalized during the joint studio work of all band members. A product of five days of brilliant chaos that brings us songs about Arthur Rimbaud's travels in Ethiopia or about Iggy Pop buying a sack of sand at a vending machine. Despite all the pleasures of surrealism, "Deserted" stands out for its clarity of sound, for which Susie Honeyman's violin also plays a leading role in many tracks. The musical focus is on textures and sounds, the album creates a wide feeling of space, a real broadband feeling that seems to be an answer to the bizarre beauty of the desert of Joshua Tree National Park in southeast California, where the album was recorded. It is saturated with barbed-wire atmosphere, sunshine and hard-earned, amused defiance.
