Meursault – Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues

Four-piece Meursault – loved by Mojo (which spelt their name wrong) and praised in The Scotsman – play six & twelve string acoustic guitars, five string banjo, tenor ukulele, accordian, upright piano, cajon, shaker, korg electribe samplers, korg synth, bowed electric guitar, autoharp, floor tom, snare – and circuit bending. If you read that list and think “folktronica”, listen in – the beats are so programmed and prominent, and Neil Pennycook’s voice strains so hard (without cracking), that the label doesn’t really do them justice. Pennycook is also a fine songwriter, producing humane lyrics such as “the worry that you carry is another word for courage” in The Furnace. They’ve also thought about the pacing of the album – for example, the instrumental Statues of Strangers is a welcome breather in between Salt Pt.1 and The Furnace.

If I may be so bold as to recommend a couple of tracks, try four, the title track (also on my social CD) and eight, A Small Stretch of Land. The title track makes a combination of lamb-and-apricot perfection with Poke, by Frightened Rabbit, whom they’re supporting in Edinburgh on 18 August. Meursault are also playing a session for Marc Riley on 6 Music on 6 August.

Since Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues was released last year, Meursault have released the Nothing Broke EP. This is the title track:

This is a live version of the penultimate track, William Henry Miller, Pt.1, played on a bandstand in Newcastle. The eccentric Miller lived in 18th-century Edinburgh and was rumoured to be a hermaphrodite. When he died, he asked to be buried face down, forty feet below the ground, so that when he ascended to heaven, he could see the souls of others burning in hell below. The story (his? hers?) makes for a beautiful song, though.

EDIT: Thanks Ed!

Neither the album nor the EP are on sale in the remaining high-street music chain, but you can buy it from Song By Toad, which helpfully puts the online store on the front page, or iTunes, which a**erisks the album with abandon.

Happy birthday – I like this one game. Hope a few of these will keep you going until midnight…

One Night Of Sin – Marc Almond
The Only One I Know – The Charlatans
In One Ear And Out The Other – Fujiya and Miyagi
What’s that you say?
Another One Goes By – The Walkmen

Bedazzled – Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
No Fun – Vitalic

Just in time for Hallowe’en, here’s a different sort of chill altogether.

The Visitations – An Electric Storm
The Black Mass: An Electric Storm In Hell – An Electric Storm

Can someone help me over this technological wall? I’ve tried to zip a load of mp3s on my trusty Mac and unstuff them on Boxstr, because it says it wants zip files, not sitx or owt like that. It uploads them, unstuffs them… and gives me a mass of 0kb files. Has anyone else had the same problem, and could you get around it? I was using the “Create archive of x items” feature under the File menu.

Inspired by Toffeeboy’s homonyms game, I plunged into my own collection to see how many songs I could find that had the same name as some better known tunes. Surprisingly few, as it turned out. But here is, as House of Pain would say, the cream of the crop (apart from Blackbird, which is beautiful would be too obviously by a Mercury-nominated folk group from the north east).

In true RR fashion, I’ve stretched Toffeeboy’s rules a bit – Cannonball is a one-word title but as a word, it’s hardly been common currency since Cromwell, and It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t a homonym for Black’s hit, but it’s a great film and this list needed some alt.country – so, press play and guess the artist. There’s precisely nothing here by

• The Mamas and The Papas!
• The Chemical Brothers!
• Iggy and the Stooges!
• Patsy Kensit and Eighth Wonder!
• Foreigner!
• Van Morrison!
• Stevie Wonder!
• James (thanks, gremlinfc)!
• The Four Tops!
• INXS!
• The Chemical Brothers (again!!)!
• James Stewart and Donna Reed!
• The Police!
• Queen!
• The Breeders!
• Radiohead!

As always, I hope you have fun…

EDIT: I’m turning this into a Podbean to see if that works…
EDIT2: The quiz is currently down for maintenance. It should be back up at lunchtime. Sorry about this.
EDIT3: Here we go again… and it works. Yeehaw! And Rich, you’re right, that is Sparklehorse.

I wanted to put this up around the time we were talking about unlikely covers but never got around to it. Listen in and wonder: who’s singing this popular tune? And who’s on remix duties?
Now that would be telling

And for the non-robots list…
Mogwai have a mellow moment, Jim Noir’s computer is – you suspect – a bit like his relationships, The Shortwave Set aren’t dedicating track three to the Guardian techies, Princess Superstar has a machine that can make her into anything she wants to be (perhaps) and, to close, The Shortwave Set (again) bring us an artificial sun.

First, Aphex Twin make Mescalinum United sound like a factory floor.
At 2, Soulwax help Daft Punk’s robots to rock.
At 3, who did you say you were?
At 4, it’s gonna get violent.
At 5, a heartbroken robot takes solace in alcohol and long solitary walks.

To continue the eighties teen movie theme…

Today, I’m working with a guy whose wife walked up the aisle to the theme from The Persuaders, which is a very good choice.

Anyway, here’s some more wedding songs. Hope you enjoy (at least) some of them.

David Holmes thinks so, in this “Who’d win a fight between James Bond and John Shaft” argument.
Next is The Avalanches’ veritable boxing card: Mr Kirk v Miss Fishborne, Dexter v The Baltimore County School Board, Dexter v a strange old man, before the headline bout: Frontier Psychiatrist v Dexter.
Then Soulwax underscore a rowing couple with Funky Town.
To close, I Am Kloot’s mysterious Twist. “We fuck and we fight, someone else does the dishes,” sings Johnny Bramwell. “There’s blood on your legs, I love you” is one of the oddest choruses around.