The Pine Valley Cosmonauts [extended]

• Misery Loves Company [Scout, 1995] **
• Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills [Bloodshot, 1998]
• Beneath the Country Underdog [Bloodshot, 2000]
• The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature [Bloodshot, 2002]
• The Executioner's Last Songs [Bloodshot, 2002] A-
• The Executioner's Last Songs Volumes 2 & 3 [Bloodshot, 2003]
• Old Devils [Bloodshot, 2010] B+
• Stranger in My Land [Bloodshot, 2013] *
• Here Be Monsters [In De Goot, 2014] A-
• The Legend of LL [Country Mile, 2015] A-
• Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls [Bloodshot, 2017] ***
• President of Wales [Country Mile, 2019] B+
• Lost on Land & Sea [Country Mile, 2023] A
• Where It Really Starts [Norman, 2024] ***

See Also:

• Jonboy Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts
• Kelly Hogan & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts
• Neal Pollack & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts
• Jon Langford & Skull Orchard
• Roger Knox and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts
• Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls
• Jon Langford & the Men of Gwent
• Jon Langford & the Bright Shiners

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Jonboy Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts: Misery Loves Company [Scout, 1995]
"explore the dark and lonely world of Johnny Cash" with more cojones than Rick Rubin ("Cocaine Blues," "What Is Truth?") **

Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills [Bloodshot, 1998]
"Across the Alley from the Alamo"

Kelly Hogan & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts: Beneath the Country Underdog [Bloodshot, 2000]

Neal Pollack & the Pine Valley Cosmonauts: The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature [Bloodshot, 2002]

The Executioner's Last Songs [Bloodshot, 2002]
See: Room for the Occasion. A-

Jonboy Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts: The Executioner's Last Songs Volumes 2 & 3 [Bloodshot, 2003]
More songs about transgression and death--two CDs' worth, actually (Jon Langford With Sally Timms, "Delilah"; Skid Marks With Sally Timms, "Homicide"; Otis Clay, "Banks of the Ohio")

Jon Langford & Skull Orchard: Old Devils [Bloodshot, 2010]
"Live for next week/Live for last year," the 52-year-old advises devilishly and also oldly in the lefthand panel of a triptych about aging that's completed by the unfinished "Book of Your Life" and the killing "Getting Used to Uselessness." After that, fittingly but dishearteningly (although under the circumstances that's fitting too), the songcraft wends its way gradually downhill; not even the title track provides much of a rise. Only then comes a finale called "Strange Ways to Win Wars" and Langford is on top of things again--not young because he's not that kind of liar, just strong and clear-eyed as he quietly and suggestively surveys our disheartening politics: "And no one is spared, no one is spared/No one is spared, no one is spared." B+

Roger Knox and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts: Stranger in My Land [Bloodshot, 2013]
Jon Langford and friends bring Aboriginal "Black Elvis" to Oakland to cherry-pick conscious country songs bogged down in more protest-music mawk than anyone admits ("Took the Children Away," "Steets of Tamworth") *

Jon Langford & Skull Orchard: Here Be Monsters [In De Goot, 2014]
Once it hits home, the opening "Summer Stars" could be the gravest song of his life, a threnody for an earth ruined by the ecological/economic catastrophe most of us foresee in our grimmer moments--a vision no less vivid or plausible for its reliance on metaphor. The metaphors that follow are easier to duck and in the case of the amelodic "Mars" ignore. But starting midway in with "Drone Operator," the lyrics become more pointed, one political indictment after another, with Langford's precisely articulated, barely contained rage his version of what they call soul. Sing it, brother. A-

Jon Langford & the Men of Gwent: The Legend of LL [Country Mile, 2015]
Having mislaid my burn of this album, which I'd spun with pleasure multiple times by then, I streamed a 13-track Spotify version before gathering the gall to launch a review, a project foreordained when on April 14 I saw Langford perform for the first time in over a decade accompanied by calm, engaged old hand Sally Timms and wild, intense Texas guitar crazies the Sadies at Sony Hall on 46th Street. Without, how to say this, putting on a show, the longtime leader of the Leeds-spawned Mekons effortlessly combined John Anderson's pure country "Wild and Blue" and Eric von Schmidt's faux Caribbean "Joshua Gone Barbados" with songs of his own devising from the opening "It's Not Enough" through the turf-defining "Nashville Radio" to the climactic Mekons statement of principle "Hard to Be Human Again." What I found most engaging and indeed moving about his set was how into it he seemed--as if he was born to perform these songs and enthralled to to sing them in a Broadway nightclub half-full of old fans who are just as enthralled to be there. And this album partakes of the same kind of what I can only call magic. A-

Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls: Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls [Bloodshot, 2017]
Cut on the fly November 9, 2016, by master songwriter Langford, three Chicago pals, and some Muscle Shoals regulars, none of whom I bet had their heads together yet ("In Oxford Mississippi," "Fish Out of Water," "Mystery") ***

Jon Langford & the Men of Gwent: President of Wales [Country Mile, 2019]
Native Welshman turned Leeds-spawned Mekons frontman turned Chicago-based songster and painter gives his roots a shot of local color and a dose of celebrity by hooking up with a band from the same hometown where he nearly drowned as a child in the swimming pool of the long-abandoned swimming pool of Bulmore Lido, now filled with stones as the song of that title reports more dolefully than you might expect from someone who almost died there. Other songs honor local busker Frankie Lodge, dead at 90 in 2019, and the title antihero, who for some reason wonders why he can't go home again after 400 Welsh citizens "living in the home of the vote" died of HIV-infected blood transfusions. B+

Jon Langford & the Men of Gwent: Lost on Land & Sea [Country Mile, 2023]
On melody alone these 12 boisterous songs enliven the most engaging and memorable of Langford's three Men of Gwent albums. But like democracy only even more so, modernization isn't all it's cracked up to be--much more is at stake. The town bustles even as the last murenger completes the last wall repair, with emotions pulled more literally than usual "from pillar to post." "Jitterburg jive and swing" or not, the now-bustling factory generates many broken bones. "Mrs. Hammer's Dream" fails to locate young Tommy on the ridge where she was sure she'd spied him--or was he just "Lost in the Wentwood"? The swimming can be tricky too: "There's a place let's take a peek/That's where they keep/The bodies of the drowned." Or if all this seems like too much dismaying detail, we can just keep the grim stuff down to "How dark is the night/How cold is the rain." A

Jon Langford & the Bright Shiners: Where It Really Starts [Norman, 2024]
Reports from a world that seems to be falling apart in more ways than one ("The Emperor's Fiddle," "Sea Houses," "Discarded") ***

See Also

• Room for the Occasion [2002-03-19]