Skull orchard revisited : arts, words & music

BOOK + CD PACKAGE. Jon Langford is best known for the music he creates with the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, but he has gained increasing acclaim for his visual art, too, over the past decade.

Nashville Radio, his first book+CD of paintings, writing, and music (Verse Chorus Press, 2005) was a sprawling, jam-packed collection full of punk energy. For this book, Langford has created a highly personal portrait of Wales, where he was born and raised. It incorporates a CD featuring the author's rare solo album Skull Orchard; originally released in 1998 on a label that promptly went bankrupt, and revamped and extended with live material (and a Welsh male voice choir) for this edition. The song lyrics, at once autobiographical and fanciful, are illustrated in a series of "word paintings" scattered throughout the book, which also includes an A to Z of Welsh culture and history (personal and general), thematically related etchings and paintings, family photographs, and Langford's first published fiction, a dystopian fable about a whale and a dolphin.