Jon Langford & the Men of Gwent [extended]

• Misery Loves Company [Scout, 1995] **
• Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills [Bloodshot, 1998]
• Skull Orchard [Sugar Free, 1998] A-
• Gravestone EP [Bloodshot, 1998] ***
• The Executioner's Last Songs [Bloodshot, 2002] A-
• Mayors of the Moon [Bloodshot, 2003] A-
• The Executioner's Last Songs Volumes 2 & 3 [Bloodshot, 2003]
• All the Fame of Lofty Deeds [Bloodshot, 2004] A
• Sir Dark Invader vs. the Fanglord [Buried Treasure, 2005] *
• Gold Brick [ROIR, 2006] *
• KatJonBand [Carrot Top, 2008]
• Old Devils [Bloodshot, 2010] B+
• Here Be Monsters [In De Goot, 2014] A-
• The Legend of LL [Country Mile, 2015] A-
• Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls [Bloodshot, 2017] ***
• President of Wales [Country Mile, 2019] B+
• Lost on Land & Sea [Country Mile, 2023] A
• Gubbins [self-released, 2023] A-
• Where It Really Starts [Norman, 2024] ***

See Also:

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

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Jonboy Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts: Misery Loves Company [Scout, 1995]
"explore the dark and lonely world of Johnny Cash" with more cojones than Rick Rubin ("Cocaine Blues," "What Is Truth?") **

The Pine Valley Cosmonauts: Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills [Bloodshot, 1998]
"Across the Alley from the Alamo"

Jon Langford: Skull Orchard [Sugar Free, 1998]
The difference is palpable. The Mekons, Waco Brothers, Killer Shrews, and I forget who are/were groups that couldn't do without Langford, whereas this is Langford deploying backup musicians, aides-d'arte who happen to be Wacos as well. There's no band feel, no sense of music-in-process--the garrulous artiste is audibly up top, organizing structural support for a sheaf of good tunes, and while the best of these is courteously passed on to Gertrude Stein, who wrote the words to "Butter Song," all the rest belong to Jonboy. Anyone who's tried to keep up with his one-liners knows he's an articulate bastard, but he's better off when he doesn't have to get to the end in 75 words or less, which is why his country band has always thrived on covers. Here he runs on, confessing his antisocial tendencies like the singer-songwriter he temporarily is--without forgetting that capitalism is antisocial too. A-

Jon Langford: Gravestone EP [Bloodshot, 1998]
Two enduring rerecorded highlights, one fine recycled obscurity, one excellent new song, mail-order only ("Nashville Radio," "The Return of the Golden Guitarist"). ***

The Pine Valley Cosmonauts: The Executioner's Last Songs [Bloodshot, 2002]
See: Room for the Occasion. A-

Jon Langford and His Sadies: Mayors of the Moon [Bloodshot, 2003]
Right, he's got all those other albums--Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Mekons of course, Waco Brothers. But there he was just the compere, or had to share the writing with his mates. This isn't enough when you have a calling to pursue, a family to support, a world to curse and mourn--when nothing can shut you up. Lyrics that despair of politics, find true pain in true love, unhinge from terra firma, and gripe about the road are delivered with country plainness, glimmers of spirituality, plenty of rolled r's, and the sense that by singing reality you can make it mean something, at least while you're at it. Not "Before they stop me"; more like "As long as I still can." A-

Jonboy Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts: The Executioner's Last Songs Volumes 2 & 3 [Bloodshot, 2003]
More songs about transgression and death--two CDs' worth, actually (Jon Langford With Sally Timms, "Delilah"; Skid Marks With Sally Timms, "Homicide"; Otis Clay, "Banks of the Ohio")

Jon Langford: All the Fame of Lofty Deeds [Bloodshot, 2004]
Purportedly a concept album in which Mr. Deeds goes to Nashville because he's outgrown his band, and life will never be the same because fame can do that (also death). Actually a bunch of songs in which Mr. Langford goes to Chicago because he can't stand Margaret Thatcher, and life will never be the same because George W. Bush can do that (also Satan). The "hard road that always brings you back" has brought him back to where he once escaped, so now he's considering Switzerland, yodel-ay-ee-oooo. True love aside, how the hell did he wind up in America? "The country is young . . . not too good on the sharing," so let the zombies tear it apart. Only he loves its music, which sustains him even in the absence of one of the ad hoc bands he'll never outgrow--the arrangements, early Cash with extras, are as committed as the singing we've learned to assume. The glory of America at war with its shame, and don't bet it'll hold up its head forever. A

Richard Buckner & Jon Langford: Sir Dark Invader vs. the Fanglord [Buried Treasure, 2005]
Langford kids Buckner into taking it easy, which for Buckner is a species of grace, and takes it easy himself to be a good sport, which for him is a kind of slackness ("The Inca Princess," "Nothing to Show") *

Jon Langford: Gold Brick [ROIR, 2006]
Music for some occasions ("Workingman's Palace," "Lost in America"). *

KatJonBand [Jon Langford & Kat Ex]: KatJonBand [Carrot Top, 2008]
"Bad Apples," "Crackheads Beware"

Jon Langford & Skull Orchard: Old Devils [Bloodshot, 2010]
"Live for next week/Live for last year," the 52-year-old advises devilishly and also oldly in the lefthand panel of a triptych about aging that's completed by the unfinished "Book of Your Life" and the killing "Getting Used to Uselessness." After that, fittingly but dishearteningly (although under the circumstances that's fitting too), the songcraft wends its way gradually downhill; not even the title track provides much of a rise. Only then comes a finale called "Strange Ways to Win Wars" and Langford is on top of things again--not young because he's not that kind of liar, just strong and clear-eyed as he quietly and suggestively surveys our disheartening politics: "And no one is spared, no one is spared/No one is spared, no one is spared." B+

Jon Langford & Skull Orchard: Here Be Monsters [In De Goot, 2014]
Once it hits home, the opening "Summer Stars" could be the gravest song of his life, a threnody for an earth ruined by the ecological/economic catastrophe most of us foresee in our grimmer moments--a vision no less vivid or plausible for its reliance on metaphor. The metaphors that follow are easier to duck and in the case of the amelodic "Mars" ignore. But starting midway in with "Drone Operator," the lyrics become more pointed, one political indictment after another, with Langford's precisely articulated, barely contained rage his version of what they call soul. Sing it, brother. A-

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-

Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls: Jon Langford's Four Lost Souls [Bloodshot, 2017]
Cut on the fly November 9, 2016, by master songwriter Langford, three Chicago pals, and some Muscle Shoals regulars, none of whom I bet had their heads together yet ("In Oxford Mississippi," "Fish Out of Water," "Mystery") ***

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

Jon Langford: Gubbins [self-released, 2023]
"Songs that fell between the cracks, tunes too exuberant and twisted to hang with the popular crowd, stuff he just forgot about pleasantly surprised the old Welsh bugger when he rediscovered them in the basement." In other words, not rejects so much as stragglers or one-of-a-kinds that didn't make the cut. Vocals tend more reflective than forceful, but not unanimously. Be glad Sally Timms pitches in on two complementary finales. But don't miss "Drone Operator," "Election Day," "Brixton," "Grog." A-

Jon Langford & the Bright Shiners: Where It Really Starts [Norman, 2024]
Reports from a world that seems to be falling apart in more ways than one ("The Emperor's Fiddle," "Sea Houses," "Discarded") ***