The Mekons Come Full Stone Circle

In the beginning, at the dawn of Mekon time back in 1977, they played it like punk, all primal scream and screed. In the 1980s, they first offered it as the jitterings of an avant-garde collective - an "angry bedroom band," as guitarist/vocalist Jon Langford says. Next, when key band members moved to the U.S., they drenched it in Country & Western.

In the 1990s, the U.K. dance scene threatened to make electric guitars as obsolete as hurdy-gurdys. But The Mekons still clung to it, only this time in the guise of total art projects, including a soft-porn album (Me, 1998).

Now, 30 years and 17 discs down the road, The Mekons once again stand at the start. Beneath their blackest punk trappings they were always, at heart, folk musicians. Natural, their new album, the first in three years, is pure folk expression - though you might not want to live among these folk. The works brood; primitive and dark, experimental and innovative.

"It's campfire recordings," says vocalist Sally Timms, "in the nuclear winter."

Back in 2004, with four open days on a British Isles tour, The Mekons passed up sure pub money and set up recording gear in a converted farmhouse in England's Lake District. A few miles away loomed Castlerigg, one of the mysterious stone circles that fastens the British Isles to the sea. The band haunted that magical ring, drank whiskey and chanted, then ripped out a dozen cuts in one mad punk rush of creativity.

Some songs question the security of civilization. Some crash science against faith. Of Natural's first cut, "Dark Dark Dark," Langford says, "Imagine Charles Darwin meeting an angel and examining its beak size." "Zeroes and Ones" discusses the yin and yang of the digital age, the comings and goings of tides and loves and all else. "Perfect Mirror" conjures a ballet of fighter jets over a black mountain lake.

So how does it feel, 30 years in, to be a Mekon making pure music like this again? Free, in a word.

"We've never been very financially successful," says Langford. "It's a f-ing gift. We only have our own expectations." Charles McNair