Prepare to be unnerved.
I’ve been listening to, immersing my ears in, I Will Kill Again, the latest album
from Neil Pennycook (and some extremely talented friends), under the guise of
literature’s greatest outsider, Meursault. Four years in the making and
recorded beneath the sunshine of Leith, it’s unnerving and disarming and heart-warming
and haunting and strange, right from its opening track (enigmatically entitled
‘…’), all tinny piano and bowed banjo, and, just when you’re starting to warm
to it, up pops a slightly robotic, cold voice to chill the blood with the words
“I. Will. Kill. Again.”
It’s an ‘all bets are off’ opener, strapping in the listener
for a ride to some dark but beautiful places; ‘Ellis be Damned’ is musically
sweet but lyrically frightening and, on an album where you’d be best advised to
expect the unexpected, ‘The Mill’ is a deftly handled melodic number until,
three minutes in, it’s gloriously rear-ended by a yelping harmonica,
simultaneously out of place yet perfectly suited.
On the anti-sea-shanty, ‘Ode to Gremlin’, guitar, piano and
voice combine superbly. It’s raw and fragile and there are absolutely no hiding
places in its sparse, open arrangement.
Meursault - Klopfgeist from Song, by Toad on Vimeo.
Unbelievably, from this point, I Will Kill Again slips its leash and starts running even wilder;
‘Klopfgeist’ finds Pennycook at his most inventive, with its cut and paste
backing track, part Kanye, part Norman Collier, a lyric about Sinatra’s last
words and a sparingly sprinkled piano. And ‘Belle Amie’, my favourite of a
great bunch, has a fractured vocal (“It’s true that I still miss you, and it’s
true that I’m still angry”) over a delicate waltz, barely there in some places,
cacophonous in others. ‘Gone, etc…’ boats another fragile vocal, set to a
backing of piano, valve hum and Geiger counter (possibly).
The title track holds the whole album together, as all great
title tracks do, by means of a craftily constructed lyric, thoughtful and dark,
as the story hinted upon in the four word opener unfolds across almost seven
intriguing minutes. It’s a deep and complex tale of suppressed thoughts that holds
the attention throughout, until it finally fades into the gentlest of piano
themes.
It’s important to stress here that albums of this quality
are rarely made alone, and the contributions of Liam Chapman, Faith Eliott,
Alex Livingstone and Reuben Taylor can’t be underestimated, the powers of I Will Kill Again would be considerably
diminished without them.
Sad to say, I can guarantee that you're unlikely ever to hear another
album like this one, which is all the more reason to seek it out and treasure
it deeply.
UPCOMING LIVE DATES (full band shows):
25th February (Song, by Toad's GRANFALLOON) – Summerhall, Edinburgh
4th March - The Lexington, London
Don't forget you can still get your hands on one (or all) of my books at Google Play by following these links;
The Great Cassette Experiment
Writing about music
More writing about music
The Great Cassette Experiment
Writing about music
More writing about music
