I've been in love with the Mekons ever since their early single "Where Were You?" became my official favorite song of all time, but I never bought one of their CDs until last week. Fear and Whiskey is supposedly their best record, and I've been listening to it off and on -- not in love with it, exactly, but liking it a lot, respecting it, rather easily trusting it to grow on me. It's rowdy British punk, cowpunk maybe, as it's credited with starting the alt-country trend. I keep playing "Hard to be Human" over and over again. To hear it is to imagine a gang of drunken goofs that has been playing crappy all evening, and then suddenly clicked. Ragged but right, as they say. No idea what the song is about, but all the songs have this kind of laughing-in-the=face-of-despair ambience to them.