The Horror! The Triumph! The Mekons!

The Mekons at the Bowery Ballroom, July 17th, 2025

The Mekons (Courtesy of Fire Records)

Situated just east of the Bowery on downtown Manhattan’s equally legendary Delancey Street, the 600-capacity Bowery Ballroom is almost half the size as its older predecessor a mile north, Irving Plaza, and like Irving Plaza isn’t much for seating unless you have the chutzpah to claim turf in the balcony. In other words, it's not a good place to be short, old, or, as happens as you age, both, which didn’t stop Patti Smith from celebrating New Year’s Eve there for over a decade. Me, I asked Jon Langford to comp me for the Mekons Thursday and was glad to see that my badge was marked V.I.P., which would make it easier to claim one of the three-seater tables that overlook the floor, as I did posthaste. The thirtysomething guy who slipped into the seat off the balcony had no such credentials, and in fact had snuck into the venue altogether, which he explained on his way to emphasizing that he’d give up the seat if necessary, was something he did all the time. A pretty smart if somewhat peculiar fellow, I thought. He’d never heard of the Mekons. Ultimately the third seat was taken over by a woman in the band’s retinue whose name I never caught.

Soon they came on, including the reclusive Tom Greenhalgh stage left on keyboards, powerhouse Steve Goulding on drums, the omnipresent Susie Honeyman on fiddle, Baron Von Trumfio on bass, and most impressively Sally Timms. It so happened I had caught Langford and Timms with a backup band of sorts at the Paramount last year and came away concerned for Timms, who’d seemed a little frail to me, with new material I didn’t feel she’d put across. This was not an issue at the Bowery, where you couldn’t quite say Timms stole the show but was as strong a presence as Langford himself as she announced the songs. Frail she was not, and a key Mekon she definitely was.

This is a pretty great band, and I stuck that “pretty” in there only for cred’s sake. At their first NYC gig in years Thursday, they were so totally on their game that as I peered down on the teeming floor even my poacher tablemate felt it instantly. Unquestionably the MC in the Mekons’ setup, on a regular basis Langford reminded the crowd that they’d released a new album called Horror, a word he pronounced and indeed half-shouted as unmusically as possible so as to emphasize its scariness: HORROR. That’s because, as I’ve neglected to mention, there’s a crucial reason the Mekons’ reputation is so stellar, which is that they’re serious leftists—the most politically astute and committed band singing in English today, with a sizable songbook to prove it. On applause alone I guarantee that a substantial majority of the fans who crowded the Bowery Ballroom not only loathe Donald Trump but are smart, conscious, and informed about it due to their own HORROR. They were there to hear a rock frontman say, just to raise our spirits: “The fascists lose. They always lose.” They were there to hear the same frontman who’d once saddled Sally with a straightforwardly meta-ironic song that goes “I love a millionaire/I love a millionaire” can the ironic MAGA jokes and move straight on to “I hate a billionaire/I hate a billionaire.”

Nor are the lyrics everything, with this band or for that matter almost all bands. So as the Mekons unleashed their songbook, which on my site stretches over 27 LPs and EPs, their lyrical scope was on display even to those who couldn’t make out much less register every word, which it’s safe to assume meant every cheering customer in the chock-full room. And as I sat there making enthusiastic noises myself, I came to realize or maybe just feel that it wasn’t only the lyrics. It was the band. Again and again I repeated or just exclaimed without intent aforethought not always moved by the lines and phrases Langford and Timms and occasionally others sang but by the rhythmic noise this or that instrumentalist added to the racket. With drummer Goulding driving the Mekons machine inexorably toward some simulation of temporary infinity, other musicians added their own momentum to the gestalt. If you’ll forgive the old trope, they rocked. And by doing so they drove everything the members of this great band felt and/or believed toward new levels or manifestations of conviction and truth. And also: HORROR.