Mekons - Journey to the End of the Night
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Music CD Cover
Artist: MekonsEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2000-03-07
Music Label: Quarter Stick
Soundtracks:
- Myth
- Out In The Night
- Last Weeks Of The War
- City Of London
- Tina
- The Flood
- Cast No Shadows
- Ordinary Night
- Powers & Horror
- Neglect
- Something To Be Scared Of
- Last Night On Earth
- Bonus Track 1
Free Music Notes for Journey to the End of the Night
Free Music Review: the dim flickering light of resistance...
Hit: 5 Stars
"...and Heracles cried at the scene of the crime..." ... "...and Heracles smiled at the first light of dawn..."
This quote frames the album. JOURNEY is a brilliant, quiet, millennial concept album, of a piece and unlike any the Mekons have done before. (It's great to have them back -- it seemed as though they were disintegrating as their other projects took priority, and their last one, called ME, was horrible.) When I saw Langford play solo acoustic in Chicago last August, he was clearly in the sober, hushed mode of JOURNEY.
The "journey to the end of the night" might also be taken existentially, but clearly refers to the dark night of triumphant capitalism. The music is that of ghosts, bloodless, alienated, carried on the all-powerful flow of Capital. The centerpiece of the album is Sally's "Flood," with an ominous, propulsive beat, modified drum&bass, that exemplifies the overall mood -- keeping the heart of humanism alive in the face of what Marx said was the necessary playing out of a given social formation. In "TINA," There Is No Alternative (to the Market), Jon sings "I can still dream of things that have never been, but someday will be." "City of London" could be London the city, but The City also refers to London's banking district: Finance Capital. The end of the song is wonderful, as a guitar chord kicks in after the words "the Empire's gone...", and Neko Case wails powerfully in the background.
On "Last Night On Earth," "the system is sick, the robber barons roam, collecting their debts and filling up death row," but the song has a devil-may-care spirit, that characteristic lively, jaunty Mekons sound, an indication that the heart still beats, and the game is not up.
And what about Tom's Heracles metaphor? Heracles was made mad by the gods, and he killed his wife and family. The rest of his life he sought redemption through prodigious toil and great deeds, but in vain. (Thanks to my sister, who teaches mythology, for this.) A perfect metaphor for humanity as proletariat, as part of Capital, alienated at its own hand.
Of course the dawn that makes us smile is the dawn of "socialism," meaning the end of Capital's rule and the dawn of true freedom. (For a superb interpretation of Marx, see Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory by Moishe Postone, Cambridge University Press, 1993.)
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