Neil Pennycook has long had his eye on a heady conceptual release; the haunted backwoods of 2017’s ‘I Will Kill Again’ or the eroded memories of youth on 2019’s ‘Crow Hill’ felt thematically cohesive, without fully committing to the bit. His self-titled sixth album is borne of the same desires – this time the story of a pair of wanderers surveying the decay in a post-apocalyptic Europe. Like those albums, the threads (the terrifying 1984 TV-film was also an influence) don’t fully line up, but in accepting that this could be a looser exploration, Meursault have made one of their best albums in years.
‘Crow Hill’ had excellent moments, but by combining new songs that were earmarked for other releases with those he’d been touring for years, as well as covers, there was a compilation feeling. ‘Meursault’ (complete with a handy phonetic guide on the cover to settle any pronunciation arguments) takes all of the elements that Pennycook has been working with for the past 15+ years, boils them down to their barest essentials and presents eight brilliant songs without a trace of fat.
‘Rats In The Corn’ has harmonica-infused folksiness, while being arch and blunt in details that would make Cormac McCarthy (RIP) smile. Its six minutes conclude in a teetering breakdown that Meursault often cook up live but haven’t always been able to replicate on record. ‘Another, Again’ completely reimagines the song ‘Another’ (from 2010’s ‘All Creatures Will Make Merry’) to the point that it may as well be a new song – the lo-fi woodwinds manage to evoke a Prohibition-era speakeasy.
‘Making the Most of the Raw Materials of Futility’ is the seeming centrepiece, pulsing with synths and pounding drums that hit hard after a couple songs of fairly wispy piano. It’s this album’s ‘Dull Spark’, ‘A Few Kind Words’ or ‘Crank Resolutions’. The fast-paced jolt of energy that’s sure to be memorable live. ‘WOLF!!!’ is a bit of a comedown, not undeserved after this, but it’s just preparing the turf for the real pièce de résistance of the album, the album’s final song: ‘Teacher, Was I Wrong To Burn’.
This is Pennycook at his most heart-wrenchingly direct, trading in delicate mandolin tones and his distinct, cracking tenor. He sings of faulty memories and despair in a way that is desperately beautiful and sad. “I was 18 / I was hardcore / Wigging out to ‘Superunknown’ / You were 17 / You were older than me”, he laments in a nod to Dylan’s ‘Back Pages’. The song moves through a life lived in small details, eventually finishing where it started: “I’m 39 / Still hardcore / Still wigging out to Superunknown.” It’s hard to state how devastating this song is – its arrangement, lyrics and Pennycook’s voice have rarely worked so well together.
Meursault’s back catalogue has rarely been short of emotional reflection. It’s often couched in seemingly abstract terms about an exploded dog or an eccentric burial plot, but the lack of artifice on ‘Meursault’ places the psychological detritus front and centre. It all makes for what might be Pennycook’s finest collection yet.