Britain’s Mekons Say No to Happy-Face Rock : * The band concerns itself chiefly with societal doom and gloom, tinged with an acid wit. It plays this evening at Bogart’s.

To Tom Greenhalgh, co-founder of the politicized British underground rock band the Mekons, there are worse things in this world than utter pessimism.

Phony optimism, for one.

“I don’t see any cause for optimism in the world at the moment,” Greenhalgh said recently over the phone from a Mekons tour stop in Chicago (the band plays tonight at Bogart’s). “To be sort of optimistic would be more discouraging (than being hopeless), in the sense that you would have just lost it. It would be a false retreat. Our viewpoint is simply trying to be realistic.”

Reality, as portrayed on the band’s current album, “The Curse of the Mekons,” is no blessing.

The songs are full of images of a culture out of whack, numbed by drugs and the desire for consumer commodities, subject to authoritarian control and ravaged by violence.

“Sorcerer,” set to an eerie dance beat, depicts capitalism as a magician whose wand is out of control, conjuring mountains of goods that threaten to bury all else. “Authority” is the monologue of an Everyman, played by Greenhalgh, who gladly enters a self-obliterating, Orwellian pact with the powers-that-be: “In bondage I’m really free, these chains are really me.” The central character of “Lyric” keeps his independence and his ability to see clearly. All it gets him is despair, as he ends up in the song’s last verse staring into the empty vastness of a night sky--a chilling vista, but scenery preferable to the death and injustice he sees around him.

Inspired by the first British punk wave, formed at an art college in Leeds in 1978, the Mekons’ thinking has always born a Marxist stamp. Luckily, they manage to sound like a vibrant rock ‘n’ roll band instead of tract-expounding activists, and even their gloomiest musings are pierced by acid wit.

The band’s 1989 album, “The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll,” was a raucous, hard-hitting album full of anthems worthy of the Clash at its peak (or of the Who, if the Who had been a post-punk band). “The Curse of the Mekons” eases back on the throttle a bit, giving more emphasis to the country-music roots that have marked the band’s work since the mid-’80s. Most Mekons albums include a country classic showcasing ballad singer Sally Timms’ melancholy, beautifully arid voice. On “Curse,” she essays a John Anderson hit, “Wild & Blue.”

While the Mekons rail against commodity-lust run amok, they accept the fact that they are a commodity themselves. “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” the band’s only album on a major American label, took a jaundiced look at how rock, whatever its expressive possibilities, has been reduced to an object of exchange.

“I don’t think we were lashing out at rock ‘n’ roll as a commodity,” said Greenhalgh, who is 35. “We’re trying to be as aware as possible of the market and the (commercialization) of what we’re doing. We’re not saying for a moment that rock ‘n’ roll is this precious sort of art form and flinging our hands up in horror” because it is now degraded. “Anybody doing something creative has to be aware” of the way in which art becomes a commodity, Greenhalgh said.

In fact, the Mekons’ major-label fling with A&M; Records left the band unhappy that it hadn’t been turned into a more popular commodity. Despite a muscular, driving sound that promised to appeal to a wide segment of the alternative-rock market, sales of “The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll” were scant (a reported 23,000 copies in the United States). After a follow-up E.P., “F.U.N. ‘90,” the group was dropped by A&M.; Consequently, “The Curse of the Mekons” is available only on import from the band’s British label, Blast First.

“What we want is to be able to carry on what we’re doing,” Greenhalgh said. “Selling huge quantities of records is not first on the list. We’d rather make the right sort of records that achieve a (commercial) potential that is there. We feel that hasn’t happened up to now.”

The result, for the band, has been a continued life of “hand-to-mouth, scratching a living.”

In January, after “The Curse of the Mekons” was recorded, the band’s drummer, Steve Goulding, left for marriage and more financially rewarding work in America. Bassist Lu Edmonds departed, too. They weren’t the first Mekons to drop out at least partly for economic reasons.

That leaves Greenhalgh and Jon Langford, the band’s founding singer-songwriter-guitarists, as core members along with singer Timms, and fiddler Susie Honeyman. Bassist Sarah Corina and drummer John Langley, a former member of the Blue Aeroplanes, are the new rhythm section. On their albums, the Mekons usually are joined by a regular array of reservists who contribute accordion, brass and other instrumental adjuncts.

One danger of chronic pessimism, combined with cult-band status, is that it can harden into discouragement, cynicism and, eventually, silence.

Greenhalgh doesn’t see the Mekons’ pessimism turning into discouragement.

“Myself and Jon Langford have always felt we’d carry on doing something, even if it was for our own amusement,” he said. “If you feel you’re at least finding ways to carry on, that’s something in itself.”

* The Mekons, Spot 1019 and Radio Blue play tonight at 9:30 at Bogart’s, in the Marina Pacifica mall, 6288 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach. Tickets: $10. Information: (310) 594-8975.

HOMELESS BENEFIT: The Dickies will headline a benefit concert for the homeless on Dec. 14 at the Costa Mesa Community Center, 1845 Park Ave., with part of the proceeds going to the Share Our Selves community agency. Also appearing are the Mummies, the Mono Men, the Muffs, Olivelawn and Black Creep. The show starts at 6 p.m. Admission: $10, plus a donation of three cans of food. Information: (714) 650-1141.