This album is rather different from its predecessor, and I genuinely have no idea what Meursault’s growing army of fans are going to make of it.  It’s denser in many ways, dirty and noisy, and yet as sad and heartbreaking as you’d expect from the band.

When we were writing all the press blurb, Neil decided to describe the album as ‘epic low-fi’ and even thought that is an almost totally meaningless term, it still seems to describe this record pretty well.  With two new band members joining, there was a danger that the cello or the electric guitar would end up swamping this record, but it’s all been handled very carefully.

I think the first time I heard this album through I pretty much summed up what I felt about it in a single sentence: there’s not so much as a weak twenty seconds on here, anywhere.

1. Payday
2. Crank Resolutions
3. All Creatures Will Make Merry
4. Weather
5. One Day This’ll All Be Fields
6. What You Don’t Have
7. Another
8. New Ruin
9. Sleet
10. Song for Martin Kippenberger
11. A Fair Exchange

High res album artwork

Digital Downloads: iTunes – eMusic – Amazon mp3

This gorgeous EP sees Loch Lomond add a new lush pop sensibility to their earlier eerie folk tunes.  It was released on Hush in the States a few months ago, and now we’re giving it a UK release.

High res album artwork

1. Ghost of an Earthworm
2. Night Bats
3. Spine (MMIX)
4. Holiday
5. Wax & Wire

Jacob from Trips and Falls emailed me this album ages ago, and I absolutely loved it.  If it weren’t for this release being on the horizon, it would have been up at the top of my list of albums of the year last year, but in September they agreed to release it on Song, by Toad Records so I have to hold of until my 2010 lists.

This is just a strange album altogether, but it’s full of surprising pop moments.  It’s a record with You Should Really Get Yours and Prelude to a Shark Attack back to back – one of the weirdest and one of the prettiest songs on the whole label.

1. How Do You Do…
2. We Were Like Strangers Today
3. And in Real Life He Wears Corduroy Pants
4. Breaking Up With My Mormon Missionaries
5. You Should Really Get Yours
6. Prelude to a Shark Attack
7. Memoirs of a Martyr
8. Thanks for Sharing
9. Damaged Goods

High res album artwork

Digital Downloads: iTunes – eMusic – Amazon mp3 (all coming soon)

This album was recorded over a couple of weekends at our house last year. Frances from Animal Magic Tricks recorded three songs with Neil and Pete from Meursault, and then Kenny came around for the second weekend to add his songs to the mix.  This album really wasn’t planned, it’s just that by the time Frances had added her touches to the three Meursault songs on the second Sunday, everything just seemed to belong together.

It’s all messy as hell, there are clicks and noises and all sorts going on, there’s even a cameo performance from our idiotic cat Floyd in the first song, and yet the resulting album is one of the strangest, most beautiful records I’ve heard in a very long time.

1. Leave Me to Lie Alone in the Ground
2. King
3. Bubble
4. Sleet
5. Crank Resolutions
6. By 11 O’Clock She’d Left
7. The Perfume of Mexican Birds
8. Soil
9. Please Don’t Send Me Home

High res album artwork

Digital Downloads: iTunes – eMusic – Amazon mp3 (coming in June 2010)

His lyrics have a touch of bitterness without any self-pity, personal without being self-absorbed, and his music is rough but still strangely hummable.  Basically it’s just really good songwriting, which will show through no matter what the recording style.  Anyhow, for those of you who read Song, by Toad on a regular basis, you’ll already know that I love this particular recording style anyway.

1. Shiver on a Twist of Fate
2. My Ex-Identity
3. Tip of the Tongue (The Quiet One)
4. Three Miles of Expectation
5. The Vacuum or the Void (Do You Feel?)
6. Two Tone Pill
7. Where the Dogs Go Free
8. Lost Soul on a Roll (That’s Me)
9. A Shade Away
10. In and Around On You

Digital download: iTunes – eMusic – Amazon mp3

The singles include new recordings of William Henry Miller Parts One and Two with the full band, including new members Phil Quirie on guitar and Pete Harvey on cello.  Dan Willson from Withered Hand and Bart Owl from eagleowl provide guest vocals on Parts One and Two respectively.  The resulting recordings are really dense and layered, and some of my favourite things I’ve ever heard from the band.

1. William Henry Miller Part 1 (Single Version)

2. The Dirt & the Roots

Digital Download – iTunes – eMusic – Amazon mp3

Buy as a pair £6 – These two singles are being released together because we see all four songs as going together, so you can buy them as a pair by clicking the buy button below.

The singles include new recordings of William Henry Miller Parts One and Two with the full band, including new members Phil Quirie on guitar andPete Harvey on cello.  Dan Willson from Withered Hand and Bart Owl from eagleowl provide guest vocals on Parts One and Two respectively.  The resulting recordings are really dense and layered, and some of my favourite things I’ve ever heard from the band.

1. A Few Kind Words
2. William Henry Miller Pt.2 (Single Version)

Digital Download – iTunes – eMusic – Amazon mp3

Buy as a pair £6 – These two singles are being released together because we see all four songs as going together, so you can buy them as a pair by clicking the buy button below.

It’s a gorgeous recording, too.  Both bands are indie-folk, to a degree, but where The Builders are more raucous and rattling, Loch Lomond are equal parts lovely and creepy.  To read the Skinny’s review, click here.

Oh, and for those of you who want to support what we’re up to here but don’t have a record player, fear not, because we’re slipping a CD-R of all the songs in with each purchase.

Loch Lomond:
1. Elephants & Little Girls
2. Field Report
3. Scabs on This Year
4. The Trumpet Song
The Builders & the Butchers:
1. When it Rains
2. Vampire Lake
3. Down to the River
4. The Rain

1. Oh, Messy Life
2. I’m Half the Man You Were
3. Elegy for the Good Times
4. Trying to Be Good
5. Xa Xa Xa
6. Matter

Digital Download – iTunes – eMusic – Amazon mp3

1. Nothing Broke
2. Red Candle Bulb
3. Love or Limb
4. William Henry Miller Pt.1
5. William Henry Miller Pt.2

Digital download – iTunes – eMusic – Amazon mp3.

1. Sleeptide
2. For the Thoughts You Never Had
3. Blanket
4. Blackout
5. Motherfucker

Digitial download: via Amazon mp3 – eMusic – iTunes.

1. Salt, Pt. 1
2. Statues of Strangers
3. The Furnace (Alternate version for preview.)
4. Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues
5. Salt, Pt. 2
6. The Dirt & the Roots
7. A Few Kind Words
8. A Small Stretch of Land
9. Ampersand After Ampersand
10. Lament For a Teenage Millionaire
11. Oh, Neighbourhood!

Digital download: via Amazon mp3 – iTunes – eMusic.

1. The Hanging Tree
2. Dancefloor
3. Poor Man’s Son
4. Sweet Annie Lee
5. Lady of the Calico (Album Version)
6. Salesman Song

Digital download: via Amazon mp3 - eMusic - iTunes.

1. Design
2. Fearing Lothian
3. Hidden Forces
4. Skorpion vz.61
5. Crossing off Titles in Books
6. Seeing Ben Lomond
7. Nae Drama, Hae a Dram

If four quid seems a bit steep, or you’re just taking a chance on something, you can download a zip file of the mp3s here for nothing. Obviously we’d prefer if you bought the CD, but we’d rather you gave it chance if you were unsure, so feel free.

This is the album, which is called The Moth Trap:

And here’s the cover for the single:

I’ll be finding my favourite local, unsigned artists and helping them put out self-release records under the Song, by Toad banner. Christ knows why – I mean, I’m pretty much guaranteed to lose money and no-one seems to have much idea where the record industry is going at the moment. Still, in the words of Doc Brown: I figured, what the heck.

Thanks!