The Mekons
Jura

A1	A Fearful Moment
A2	Refill
A3	An Incident Off St. Kitt's
A4	Shine On Silver Seas
A5	Land Ahoy!
B1	Beaten And Broken
B2	Getting On With It
B3	I Am Come Home
B4	The Last Fish In The Sea
B5	I Say, Hang Him!
B6	Go From My Window

Bloodshot press release:

  As the story goes: Jura, an island off the coast of Scotland with more sheep than people, so bare and infertile the Vikings passed it by, is a place replete with longing, isolation and remote Gaelic oddness. It's where George Orwell went slighty mad and finished 1984.

It is also where folk-punk lifers The Mekons teamed up with Chicago’s musical polyglot Robbie Fulks for a month to record this limited-edition collection of rough sea shanties and mournful tales pulled from the fog of the bay and the fog of the local whiskey distillery. Here are songs to be whispered over a dung fire in a sparse peasant’s cottage, the incessant winds being your only constant companion, or to be sung while pounding the pint glass on the pub’s rail. Or, perhaps, to be wailed into the tempests beyond the cliffs, to wonder if they’ll ever be heard. The songs were organically written together, covered, or taken from traditionals and played by all of the assembled cast of musicians or by a select few. Includes the re-working of the Mekons classic "Beaten and Broken," which, with Fulks at the vocal helm sounds, according to Rolling Stone "natural, if not a little dangerous."

The cycle of music crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic continues in wonderful and weird ways.

From the rather hilarious liner notes written by Robbie Fulks, which kind of sums up the vibe of the time: "Maybe you've heard the long joke with the cowboy and the lesbian at the bar, where the lesbian tells the cowboy in great detail what she does as a lesbian, and then asks the cowboy what he does. He replies uncertainly, "I thought I was a cowboy..." Well, I thought I was a drunk. Then I met the Mekons. Their drunkenness approached the heroic, the hard-to-believe, a drunkenness as sky-reaching as the drifts of snow in nineteenth-century snow disaster stories or green groaning piles of turtles in Dr. Seuss. No day trip was so tight that multiple pub stops, starting about noon, couldn't be shoehorned in. No night ended without jugs of peaty brown swill upended, and no night ended as it decently should have. There was staggering, backslapping, laughing into tears, bobble-headed nods into unconsciousness, loss of motor function, and out-of-doors vomiting. But that was all me; the Mekons were so at one with liquor that, with a couple notable exceptions, no amount of it changed them."

Reviews:

Exclaim:

So, Bloodshot records label mates Robbie Fulks and (most of) the Mekons went on a tour of Scotland together, stopped off at a tiny fishing island called Jura and recorded an album of a) old sea shanties, and b) songs of theirs that sound just like old sea shanties, possibly while staggeringly drunk. Many alt-country fans will have already downloaded Jura before they've finished reading the above description.
 
For those who haven't, here's more of the appeal: Robbie Fulks is a cranky, hyper-intelligent beanpole who mines centuries of American music to make albums full of songs that can be viciously clever, or hopelessly tender, sometimes both at once. The Mekons are one of the old-school punk-turned-country bands whose proletarian balladry made the genre shift with ease. Together, they work. After all, the sea shanty, like the American drinking song, and like the punk anthem, is music to sing with other people. The album sounds like a house party rather than a concert. One can easily imagine the live show, a tiny bar or kitchen, filled to the brim, everyone in the audience belting out the lyrics back at the band.
 
In fact, the great flaw of this album is that it isn't a concert, and the listener is not right there with the band; it feels disconcerting to be listening to an album of alternately rollicking and mournful populist sing-alongs while alone in one's living room. You could crank it up, guzzle whiskey and join in on the choruses nonetheless, but your roommates, and/or children, might never let you live it down.

American Songwriter:

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

This meeting between the scrappy likes of American alt-country/folk-rocker Fulks and UK punk/folk veterans the Mekons was birthed from a 2014 tour that featured both Bloodshot artists. Someone decided it would be a good idea to haul away to the remote titular island off the coast of Scotland (that has “more sheep than people”) and let fly on a set of acoustic, predominantly traditional fare. These 11 tracks, recorded in just three days with Fulks and a five member subset of Jon Langford’s ever evolving group dubbed the “mini-Mekons,” are the result.

It’s an organic, rootsy set of typically edgy and sea shanty-styled UK folk tunes, murder ballads and general story songs that feel like they have been around for hundreds of years. Accordions, fiddles, guitars and harmonium combine on the songs, many about the ocean such as “The Last Fish in the Sea,” Shine on Silver Seas,” “Land Ahoy!” and others. They capture the rustic, Scottish vibe with authenticity and occasionally the inebriated, shaggy tilt that has characterized much of the Mekons’ output over the decades. The waltz time drunken rambling of “Beaten and Broken” and “I Say Hang Him!” sound like something the Pogues might have dug into. And anytime we get to hear the wonderful vocals of Sally Timms, as on a few key, mostly somber tracks, it’s always a treat, even if some are hypnotic dirges.

Fulks only sings lead on three tunes such as the bluesy harmonica driven “Refill,” the disc’s most American-styled selection that even mentions Missouri. He is also featured on the humorous “Getting on With It,” a lusty slice of Brit folk that suggests a body of land getting discovered by explorers might not be in everyone’s best interest.

The album exudes the salty air of the conditions it was recorded in, which makes it a success on that level. How much your tastes lean towards undiluted, traditional Brit folk will gauge your enjoyment for this batch of unadulterated music in that genre, played and conceived with the purest of intentions.

Paste:

Post-punk and bluegrass rarely go together. Sure, there are outliers like The Punch Brothers or Trampled by Turtles who play traditional instruments at punk-rock speeds, but the two disparate musical styles don’t have much more of a history together. That’s why Jura, a combination between members of England’s Mekons and American folk musician Robbie Fulks, is such an interesting concept album.

The Black Friday Record Store Day release, only available on limited edition vinyl and digitally, came together after The Mekons and Fulks toured the United Kingdom together in 2014. Named after (and recorded on) an island off the coast of Scotland, Jura includes songs written by individual members (Fulks composed “Refill” and “I Say, Hang Him!” whereas The Mekons wrote “Beaten and Broken”), originals written together in the spirit of the locale, and interpretations of traditional songs (like the closer “Go From My Window”). The whole LP sounds comparable to a Chieftains album, but showcasing Scotland rather than Ireland.

Of course, the history of American folk music reaches back to Anglo song traditions, so Jura’s strengths reside in capturing those sounds and modernizing them. The mini-Mekons play electric saz, violin, accordion and banjolele, and the range of sounds feels both familiar and jarring at once. The number of vocalists contributes to that inconsistency, as well. Within the first three songs, Jura explores melodic balladry from the Mini-Mekons in “A Fearful Moment,” harmonica funk sung by Fulks in “Refill,” and accent-heavy sea shanty “An Incident Off St. Kitt’s.” The discontinuity gives Jura a sense of spontaneity and pays homage to an old musical community, but also makes the album feel more like the one-off, just-for-fun, conceptual project that it is.

Rolling Stone

(incl. soundfile 'Beatemn and broken')

In 2005, Robbie Fulks released “Countrier Than Thou,” a song with a rockabilly twang and Bukowski ramble that skewered the hypocrisy of those who lambast mainstream country but come from anywhere but the south (and, while he was at it, took a shot at George W. Bush, too). The Ivy League-educated Fulks, who lives in Chicago and has been making roots records for almost two decades, has never been particularly concerned with honoring birthright over creativity — and his newest collaboration with England’s cowpunk pioneers the Mekons is proof incarnate. Together, they created Jura, a collection of songs recorded during their 2014 U.K. tour. The song “Beaten and Broken” is premiering exclusively below on

“It sounded fun, to my wife at least,” Fulks tells Rolling Stone Country about the idea to head across the pond with the Mekons, a trip that would give rise to Jura. “She said, ‘Go to Scotland with the Mekons? How could you not?’ It has to be said that she hasn’t historically always had my best interests at heart. ‘Beaten and Broken’ was my favorite of the songs they sent me to learn — it’s fucking brilliant.”

Originally featured on the Mekons’ 1989 compilation Original Sin, Fulks’ vocals and strident strumming on “Beaten and Broken” transforms the song into half working-class bluegrass anthem, half Gaelic traditional, made even more poignant by the fact that it was recorded during the time when the Scottish were voting for independence. Or, maybe, the song was always that potent. After all, when the Mekons released pioneering albums like Fear and Whiskey in the Eighties, it wasn’t exactly commonplace to mesh leathered British punk with Nashville-born riffs. Now paired with Fulks, whose breed of folk honky-tonk mastered and satirized the same genres all at once, “Beaten and Broken” sounds natural, if not a little dangerous.

“We asked Robbie if he’d like to come on an adventure, and fill in for various missing Mekons,” says John Langford of the Mekons, about the unusual tour’s origins. “Tom [Greenhalgh] normally sings ‘Beaten and Broken,’ and one of Robbie’s tasks was to be Tom, which was kinda strange when Tom turned up unannounced halfway through the tour. Robbie changed the words of ‘Beaten and Broken’ and we enjoy the result.” Indeed, Fulks made small tweaks like swapping “died” for “sighed” at no expense to the raucous flow.

Fulks described Jura, the sparse Scottish isle that inspired the album and where it was recorded, as a place with “200 people, many more sheep, many, many more bottles of whiskey, and some number beyond fathoming of rocks and trees and clods of dirt.” In other words, perfect fodder for a record that captures the feeling of restless freedom dangling above great instability. With lots of whiskey thrown in for good measure.

Pop matters

Since relocating to Chicago in the ‘90s, the members of erstwhile post-punk collective the Mekons have fully ensconced themselves within the esoteric confines of the Windy City’s alt.country scene. Having released nearly a dozen projects under a handful of guises on the city’s bastion for all things subversively country and Americana, Bloodshot Records, Jon Langford and company seem to have pretty much full reign to do whatever they damn well please at this point. Fortunately, this time out they elected to partner up with perennial underdog and former label mate Robbie Fulks for a subtly affecting collection of folk ballads.

Where others would seek to sequester themselves in a Midwestern cabin somewhere in the snow covered woods to write an record an album over a 30-day period – a simple enough prospect given Chicago’s location -, the Mekons and Fulks elected to head a bit further east, alighting in Scotland. More specifically, they made their way to the titular island of Jura off the coast of Scotland.

Located in the Inner Hebrides, the mountainous, barren, blanket bog covered expanse of the island proved an ideal locale for the pairing of the Mekons and Fulks on a handful of original songs and ideas derived from folk songs and sea shanties. In this, they managed to create a sound more in keeping with the British folk rock tradition of the late ‘60s than the alt.country scene of the ‘90s.

Given their unforgiving surroundings, it comes as little surprise that much of Jura is made up of hauntingly sparse ballads, leaden with melancholy and redolent of the salty sea air that no doubt swirled outside whatever structure in which these recordings were captured. In these spare, percussion-less acoustic recordings, they manage to tap into the heart and soul of their surroundings to create an album that transcends either’s previous work, resulting in something wholly new and different.

Opening with the melancholic ballad, “A Fearful Moment”, they make clear from the onset that this won’t be the usual drunken tomfoolery and punk-infused country music. Instead, it shows off a sensitive side both lyrically and musically often hinted at but rarely this fully embraced by either. Built upon a series of long, droning tones that eventually resolve into the chorus, “A Fearful Moment” if the fullest track on the album and an ideal opener in its ability to decisively set the tone.

While each performer brings their own unique idiosyncrasies to the project, it is Sally Timms who proves the best suited to this stripped down approach. Her keening vocals manage to steal the show on “Go From My Window”, “Shine on Silver Seas” and “I Am Come Home”. Here she embraces her willowy, untrained voice, finding a perfect fit within these balladic folk numbers. Like a less-sure Sandy Denny or more twee Lavinia Blackwall, Timms manages just the right vocal timbre to sell this trio of songs as being far older than they are.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, “An Incident Off St. Kitt’s” is a literary tale of murder and intrigue on the high seas, perfectly suited thematically to the album’s saltier moments. One of the few truly up tempo tracks, it serves as a bit of a palette cleanser, helping to re-shift focus after the lone sore thumb on the album: Fulks’ lead contribution on “Refill”.

With his nasal delivery and affected twang, it simply feels out of line with the overall tone achieved throughout the rest of the album. Placed within any other, more stylistically typical context for either artist, “Refill” would be a perfect fit. Here it simply proves a bit of a distraction and, coming second in the running order, effects the albums’ flow. Fortunately, he gets more into the overriding spirit of the album with a gleefully over the top performance on “I Say, Hang Him!” a winning paean to drunken maritime justice complete with typically acerbic Fulksian lyrics (“don’t we go home to our wives/our fat disgusting wives almost every night?”)

So while the pairing may not have been quite as successful as they may have hoped, they have come away with a handful of lovely folk songs and sea shanties (the singsong “Land Ho!” in particular) that filters an age-old folk song tradition through a contemporary lens. Very close to perfect, Jura is gleefully light-hearted one moment and unbearably tragic the next, making it one of the best releases from either artist in some time.