Meursault I Will Kill Again

Neil Pennycock wrote ‘I Will Kill Again’ with a rock album in mind, broke it all down and built it back again in a warped shape between folk and classicism. That sounds real nice; can you blame him? The coveted Scottish Album of the Year nominee has come out the other end with something rather wonderful to show for all that indecision: he yelps his way through a record that seems to be patting him on the back, softening the blows of his forlorn stories. The crooked arrangements of “...” are a fine thing indeed, introducing the record in a way that embraces both its stark, as-I-am nature and its total loveliness.

Pennycock likes to shift between the limelight and the shrouded nothing around it: he yelps at the forefront of proceedings on the lonely strummings of “Ellis Be Damned” before hiding behind a bucket production worthy of Woody Guthrie on “Ode to Gremlin” -- maybe it’s not so much production as how far back he stands, but it’s wonderful to hear someone belt out their emotion from a faraway plane. The rather jubilant, piano-twinkling “Oh, Sarah” sounds like the kind of anthem we could all do a round of together, but once again Pennycock distances himself and his band from us in the crowd, making it feel something like a dream.

Ever so slightly weird as he is, this record veers off into hints of electronic music with the noisy bites that open “Gone, etc”, setting up an ugly city whirr to give gravel to the otherwise overall beautiful chords around it. This song is proof of just how deep Pennycock can go -- it treads water between hope and desperation, its textures distorted and melodies contradicted in an epic rollercoaster of emotional response. I’m loving his folk record, but I’ll happily take a record of songs like that, too.