The Meffs – Business

“I want to bite the hand that feeds me,” opined Elvis Costello in his paradoxically radio-friendly New Wave hit Radio Radio in 1978. At the height of his angry powers and riding that wave of skinny tie and trouser popularity, his excoriation of British popular music broadcasting was never really appreciated as the flaying we know it to be now. It was just Costello being Costello, snapping at the norms like a moody teen. But he wasn’t alone. The same year, The Rezillos released their Top Of The Pops single which was a jaunty earworm cloaking a savage disembowelling of the revered pop music show and revealed the BBC’s flagship commercial music circus for what it was. It, ironically again, brought the band onto that same Top Of The Pops which demonstrated that either the producers had a sense of humour, or that they dared not disrupt the “stock market for your hi-fi”, regardless of how uncomfortable and auto-destructive a three-and-a-half minutes it turned out to be.

Which brings us to today and The Meffs. If you’re looking for a thermometer reading of The Meffs‘ status in today’s punk and indie world, count how many of their T-shirts you see in circulation at festivals like Rebellion (clue: it’s a lot) which, given independent bands’ reliance on merch to make ends meet, is a sign that one part of the off-mainstream economy is working. But the real economy is not working and the Essex hardcore duo are pissed off about this – and many other aspects of modern life – and Business is their slot at Speaker’s Corner. It has been a monumental period for the band, sharing stages with the biggest names and bringing their rage to festivals up and down the land. Business captures that fury in a way few studio projects do. Yet they’re still defiantly DIY and in touch with their base in a way that makes each performance a communion.

This album, 35 solid minutes of brutal, roaring punk rock, is not a manifesto or a list of demands. It’s a billboard, a conversation starter. The Meffs are zero artifice and 100% street. The struggles they observe within the politics – in its widest possible sense – are real. Punk Rock has given them a megaphone, but it’s the voices and concerns of everyday people that they amplify. Kicking off with the muddy jungle drums intro of Dreamin’, the tone is set as Lily and Lewis (for The Meffs are but two) career into just over a minute of brutal riffing. The foot is off the accelerator for a moment as What A Nightmare grinds out a massive slab of Weltschmertz. The title track Business is a huge ‘fuck you’ to corporate entertainment as the band lament but also celebrate their position within the industry. If the album could be distilled into one song, it would be the magnificently furious Disorder (Wake Up) which is a rocket-propelled grenade attack on systems of control. I’m So Modern skewers Instagram culture and the perpetual race to be seen to be relevant over frantic, hypnotic riffing.

The whole album is a seething and powerfully outraged assault, sonically and philosophically. It is a tough album full of uncomfortable truths. It’s bigger, bolder, angrier than before. It’s also a necessary album. The Meffs‘ uncompromising stance won’t endear them to tastemakers but every revolution needs a John Connor when the AI culture bots are roaming the wastelands, assimilating and liquidating everything of any value. Set your alarm clock to Meffs o’clock and wake the fuck up. 

Business is available through streaming platforms and can be purchased on CD & vinyl here