Meursault - Something For The Weakened

(Song, by Toad)

You would break your heart – or part with it – for that album title alone, would you not.

And that’s before we speak of ‘Hole’, the greatest desolate / optimistic ballad since Smog’s ‘Rock Bottom Riser’. ‘Hole’ slowly burns at the centre of Something For The Weakened, the third LP from Edinburgh alt-rock and chamber-folk conquerors Meursault, and is devastating.

Many of SFTW’s bruised arias are familiar from gigs – the Shangri-Las rock of ‘Flittin’’, the caustic upsurge of ‘Settling’ – but the album’s philharmonic arrangements revitalise Meursault: its strings and pianos are exquisite. Singer-songwriter Neil Pennycook is customarily arresting, from the fired-up pop of ‘Dull Spark’ to the cracked-falsetto of ‘Mamie’, and it all makes for their most cohesive, gorgeous and forceful album yet.