Much of my Internet browsing time these days is spent searching for new bands and artists to go out and see. This is what I'm doing in 2023. Yesterday I chanced on the latest gig set up by Prancey Dog, who along with Wandering Oak cater for the needs of the Newcastle indie fraternity. They're putting on Indie Folk Rockers Meursault mid August at The Cumberland Arms and I'll be penciling the date in to go and see them.
Their latest album, which is eponymous, though it's actually their sixth over a fifteen year stretch, is enough to make me resolve to make that date. Meursault are grittily in the Scottish existential tradition, a proud one stretching back through Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, James Kelman, Muriel Spark even and Alex Trocchi.
That they're existentialists is apparent from a brief exposure to their music which sounds like they're struggling uphill in the face of a strong gale. Or else the cover of Meursault which gives us a bleak, unpopulated landscape that Van Gogh might have painted while nursing his severed ear. Well, I'm stretching a point here. Only if it has highland mountains on it. But really you only need to come back to their name. Meursault, the antihero of Camus' L'etranger the core tract of bedroom rebels everywhere. These guys have read a lot of Penguin Classics. Now they're putting them to song.
The album begins with a magnificent declaration, almost a manifesto Rats in the Corn. In six minutes of toil and anguish it tells you everything you need to know about the band. But the rest of the record doesn't lag for a moment. I'd wager Meursault wear arran sweaters, are prone to long nights in the boozer discussing the grim state of the world and grit their teeth a lot. I look forward to finding out if I'm right come Aigust.
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