Click to listen to Mekons' 'Geeshie'

Barely famous after 30 years of damning the marketplace, Mekons fear no genre. They all but invented country punk in the mid-Eighties, but dabbled in everything from indie-rock thunder to baffling electronic albums. Ancient & Modern, their first in four years, is meaty and grizzled folk rock. Sally Timms’ near-whisper strides through the cabaret-jazzy "Geeshie"; Tom Greenhalgh's pipes anchor melancholy strummers; and semi-leader Jon Langford leaps around the stage ("Space in Your Face"). The title track is almost a play on nostalgia's seductive power, complete with violin and singalong verses about sailing away. After all these years, you still want to join them. 

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“The A Team”

This debut track from the then-20-year-old British singer-songwriter has a dark story behind it. Sheeran says he culls songwriting inspiration from "viewing other people's situations," which, for the heroine in "The A Team," involves drug addiction and prostitution that began as a teen. Sheeran paints the woman's trials with haunting imagery such as "But lately her face seems/Slowly sinking, wasting/Crumbling like pastries." "I did a gig at a homeless shelter, [and the song] is about one of the women there. It's her story," he said.