Consumer Guide Album

The Mekons and Robbie Fulks: Jura [Bloodshot, 2015]
Recorded on the Scottish title island for Record Store Black Friday with jaunty pessimist Fulks sitting in for heroic depressive Tom Greenhalgh, this sold out pronto and is now download-only. Although Fulks fits in, Greenhalgh is missed, and from Rico Bell's resigned "Reason walks with rabid dogs gnawing at its hands" to Sally Timms's dolorous "But he can't have a harboring here," the performances lack the full-bore joy-in-bitterness their cult fetishizes vinyl for. Yet in the end, it is a Mekons record. It's been quite a long time since that wasn't enough. A-