This is a newish band from Edinburgh who have just released their new debut album “Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues” on Edinburgh label Song By Toad Records. This record is absolutely superb. An absolute cracker of a hum-dinger of a bobby dazzler!!! Check their myspace for snippets and then buy this bad-boy! It’s only £8. If in the USA you can only purchase it via a download on Amazon I believe (not sure what price is?)…anyway there’s a link below their myspace if you’re interested in purchasing after listening to this awesome band.
http://www.myspace.com/meursaulta701
http://songbytoadrecords.com/2008/11/meursault-pissing-on-bonfireskissing-with-tongues/
Here’s a few reviews…
REVIEW
“Much like the vino of their French regional namesake, Edinburgh’s Meursault have been on a lot of lips recently. So, after establishing a fervent following with a string of spellbinding live shows over the past six months, the quartet’s decision to give their debut long-player Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues another push via Edinburgh indie label Song, By Toad couldn’t have been better timed. Knee-deep in folkish narratives, rousing numbers The Furnace and Lament For a Teenage Millionaire are transformed into rapacious tidal waves by the gnarling tectonic plates of electronica that underpin them. A Few Kind Words is an aural minefield and the record’s immediate stand-out, laced with bombastic percussion and the screeching banshee wail of frontman Neil Pennycook. Yet, as time flies, it’s gentle cutlet A Small Stretch Of Land that springs to the fore: a tortured, weeping lament bound by introspection. Make no mistake, after a spin of this sublime record only one word will pass your lips: magnificent.” [Billy Hamilton]
REVIEW
"This is just a brilliant, brilliant album. I don’t know what it is about the Meursault sound that I love so much, but there’s something in the combination of scratchy, back-of-the-cupboard-in-the-next-room electronica and the reckless chimes of the banjo and ukulele that just makes me crazy. Then there’s the pace; the music may be open to accusations of miserablism but it’s not morose, and that rhythm just drives it on through everything as if even in heartbreak it had somewhere very urgent to go.
And then there’s also the voice. I’ve described Neil Pennycook’s superb vocals as a plaintive howl in a live setting, but recorded he’s a bit less dominant. They’ve faded his voice out slightly, and put it in the back of the same cupboard as the electronics. It’s so deliberately crackly and just slightly distant that there’s a kind of mysterious quality to this album, almost like an old photograph that’s blurred just enough that you can’t quite be sure of the faces you’re looking at, but you think they look just enough like you that you might be related: disquieting slightly, and yet familar and intimate.
Neil said that they recorded their first EP with the help of a label, but that the label didn’t really bring much to the equation that he felt he couldn’t do better himself, so they released this album without a label. Go to their MySpace and order a copy - you’ll have to contact them as the only ‘Buy It’ link appears to still be for their old EP, although hopefully they’ll get that sorted soon enough - and I can promise you you won’t regret it. The whole record has perfect shape, a gently arcing emotional direction, and a gorgeous sense of completeness, the likes of which I haven’t heard in a ‘proper’ album for a while.
If last year was the year of the small label on Song, by Toad, then this year is shaping up to be the year of the self-release."