Jon Langford’s new album with the Sadies is just one in a long line of Langford side projects that the Mekons leader doesn’t treat like side projects. His other primary extra-Mekons musical endeavors — the Waco Brothers and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts — have all made it past their first album, and Mayors of the Moon, his first collaboration with the alterna-country group the Sadies, is good enough to warrant his continued interest.

Langford brings his sharp sense of humor and his penchant for rock-and-roll bombast to the Sadies, a crack group of musicians who walk a line between the psychedelic country of Gram Parsons and a rich Sun Studios sound. "American Pageant" is a rave-up that sets gritty guitar distortion against a cleaner backdrop of reverbed and tremolo’d guitars; "Up to My Neck in This" pulls the Sadies into Langford’s punk-rock gutter with a furious beat and raucous guitar playing. By the end of the album, it’s clear that Langford is comfortable just being himself around this new group of players as he dispenses with more-romantic visions of life on the road in "Are You an Entertainer?" and cracks, "Yeah, I’m a real performer/I’ll swallow this room and blow coke up your bum." And the Sadies get their say too, with less rowdy tunes that are more up their alley.

(Jon Langford, the Sadies, and the Waco Brother perform tonight, January 30, at T.T. the Bear’s Place. Call 617-492-BEAR.)