Jon Langford & the Men of Gwent

• The Legend of LL [Country Mile, 2015] A-
• President of Wales [Country Mile, 2019] B+
• Lost on Land & Sea [Country Mile, 2023] A

See Also:

• Richard Buckner & Jon Langford
• KatJonBand [Jon Langford & Kat Ex]
• Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls
• Jon Langford
• Jon Langford & the Bright Shiners
• Jonboy Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts
• Jon Langford and His Sadies
• Jon Langford & Skull Orchard
• The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
• merge all

Consumer Guide Reviews:

The Legend of LL [Country Mile, 2015]
Having mislaid my burn of this album, which I'd spun with pleasure multiple times by then, I streamed a 13-track Spotify version before gathering the gall to launch a review, a project foreordained when on April 14 I saw Langford perform for the first time in over a decade accompanied by calm, engaged old hand Sally Timms and wild, intense Texas guitar crazies the Sadies at Sony Hall on 46th Street. Without, how to say this, putting on a show, the longtime leader of the Leeds-spawned Mekons effortlessly combined John Anderson's pure country "Wild and Blue" and Eric von Schmidt's faux Caribbean "Joshua Gone Barbados" with songs of his own devising from the opening "It's Not Enough" through the turf-defining "Nashville Radio" to the climactic Mekons statement of principle "Hard to Be Human Again." What I found most engaging and indeed moving about his set was how into it he seemed--as if he was born to perform these songs and enthralled to to sing them in a Broadway nightclub half-full of old fans who are just as enthralled to be there. And this album partakes of the same kind of what I can only call magic. A-

President of Wales [Country Mile, 2019]
Native Welshman turned Leeds-spawned Mekons frontman turned Chicago-based songster and painter gives his roots a shot of local color and a dose of celebrity by hooking up with a band from the same hometown where he nearly drowned as a child in the swimming pool of the long-abandoned swimming pool of Bulmore Lido, now filled with stones as the song of that title reports more dolefully than you might expect from someone who almost died there. Other songs honor local busker Frankie Lodge, dead at 90 in 2019, and the title antihero, who for some reason wonders why he can't go home again after 400 Welsh citizens "living in the home of the vote" died of HIV-infected blood transfusions. B+

Lost on Land & Sea [Country Mile, 2023]
On melody alone these 12 boisterous songs enliven the most engaging and memorable of Langford's three Men of Gwent albums. But like democracy only even more so, modernization isn't all it's cracked up to be--much more is at stake. The town bustles even as the last murenger completes the last wall repair, with emotions pulled more literally than usual "from pillar to post." "Jitterburg jive and swing" or not, the now-bustling factory generates many broken bones. "Mrs. Hammer's Dream" fails to locate young Tommy on the ridge where she was sure she'd spied him--or was he just "Lost in the Wentwood"? The swimming can be tricky too: "There's a place let's take a peek/That's where they keep/The bodies of the drowned." Or if all this seems like too much dismaying detail, we can just keep the grim stuff down to "How dark is the night/How cold is the rain." A