In 1986, the Mekons released The Edge of the World, an elegy for the death of the political and social dreams of punk rock in England. This fantastic record casts the band as defeated outcasts, literally adrift on an ocean of hopelessness. On Gold Brick, Langford has regained solid ground, but his quest is far from over. Broadly put, the album's theme is exploration (the record's subtitle is "Lies of the Great Explorers", after all). His songs ask the question: What does the explorer do when there's nothing left to explore?
Always keenly aware of the plight of the working man, Langford paints portraits of people trapped by economics and circumstance, relegated to the "Workingman's Palace" (the dingy corner bar) for solace and empty camaraderie. He sings about how easy it is to lose your way and, as on the title track, how people immerse themselves in the ordinariness of routine to avoid the abyss of loneliness and irrelevance.
Gold Brick is Jon Langford as his most introspective, with a tenderness to the music that is not typical for this normally hard-driving rocker. As he has shown time and again over his long career, he knows how to make it work. The record features a fantastic cover version of "A Salty Dog" by Procol Harum and the epic "Lost in America", which Langford originally wrote for an episode of the Chicago-based public radio show This American Life.
As with most of his recent efforts, Gold Brick sports cover art by Langford who, when he's not being a rock star or a country music revivalist, has a career as a visual artist as well. Viva la renaissance, man!
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