Search - Mendoza Line :: Fortune

In 2003 the Mendoza Line left our shores for their first tour of Europe. It has been frequently observed of the Mendoza Line that they are never short of baggage, and this instance proved no exception: between the unexpected death of longtime inspiration Joe Strummer and the demoralizing inevitability of the looming Iraq invasion, it felt to the band as though the very planet itself was slumping beneath the millstone burden of forces far beyond their control. The result is "Fortune," an astonishing series of detailed narratives, some told from the point Americans traveling abroad in 2003, and others from the perspective of recent immigrants to the United States. Interspersed with biting cultural commentary and (of course) a little romance, the resulting work is inspiring and intoxicating and a little exotic. It is also their most rockin? album to date, using mid-period Rolling Stones and the biting writing of 80s Elvis Costello and Graham Parker as a blueprint.