LIVE FROM LEEDS : MEKONS OFFER COUNTRY WITH A TASTE OF EUROPE

The country-rock renaissance and revolution was a musical movement we Angelenos thought we had safely in hand.

But with local talents like Maria McKee (Lone Justice) and the Kinman brothers (Rank and File) having retreated from country adventurism, what’s left are mostly either strict traditionalists or half-hearted jokesters who plainly see playing country as “slumming”--and not much of anyone with the ability to radically transform or update the music.

Enter: England.

First there was Elvis Costello’s enduringly brilliant “King of America” album of last year, in which Britain’s finest songwriter managed to appropriate American music for his own purposes without sacrificing any of his own dryly intellectual, wordy style.

Much the same could be said of the lesser-known but equally heady Mekons--a 10-year-old band from Leeds whose new album, “The Mekons Honky Tonkin’,” finds the group mixing its post-punk with country in a fashion far more serious and far less self-conscious than the LP’s tongue-in-cheek title suggests.

Not that any stray Nashvillian wandering into Club Lingerie on Friday for the Mekons’ local debut would’ve mistaken them for a hometown outfit, or even necessarily discerned any obvious country influences at all.

The one cowboy hat among the seven players on stage didn’t do much to offset the heavy English accents and the heavy sense of English locale in what lyrics were intelligible.

And even though there was a fiddle player on stage (Susie Honeyman), her playing often approximated an accordion part more than a hoedown violin--heightening the fact that the Mekons bore far more resemblance to Ireland’s folkish Pogues than any erstwhile American country-rockers.

On top of that, some songs call up far more obvious contemporary comparisons: The wryly titled “Sympathy for the Mekons” had a wonderful Jam-like beat and feel, and “Hole in the Ground” suggested Mick Jones fronting the Clash.

But the country is there; it’s just been exceedingly well-diluted into a rock mix that includes equal doses of Cajun and old European sounds. The harmonies (of singers Jon Langford, Tom Greenhalgh and Sally Timms) and melodies were pleasingly derivative of tradition, as were some of the sentiments.

Perhaps the group’s biggest deviation from traditional country is also its biggest strength and weakness right now: the ambiguity and lack of discipline in the songwriting.

Though the band risks going over audience heads and not connecting emotionally by going in for such dark and obscure verse, that kind of writing does demonstrate their commitment to not simplifying their style even when incorporating “simple” country music. They ain’t slumming, and that’s a relief.

Friday’s show was opened by L.A.’s own Radio Ranch Straight Shooters, who, in contrast, do absolutely nothing to subvert the traditional Western swing they reproduce. But reproduce it they do, and masterfully.