Last Night Meursault played at the Old Blue Last in EC2 and brought some bloody Scottish passion with them from Penicuik (a town within shrieking distance of Edinburgh). Penicuik’s almost eponymous anti-hero is Neil Pennycook who writes, sings and tortures guitar for Meursault. He whispers his complaints or opens his lungs with raw abandon, recalling great Caledonian forbears: for instance punkish poet Aidan Moffat and protest singer Dick Gaughan. His songs describe loss and bitter yearning and range from a capella laments to roaring wig-outs. The modest but engaged Shoreditch crowd held their breath in the quieter passages adding to the emotional impact.

Pennycook is very much the frontman, behind him in the shadows, bass, drums, electric piano and a second guitar, politer than his own, provide the chassis for his unruly vehicle. Many numbers begin as melancholy folk songs before descending into miasmas of swirling aural chaos. The white noise is always tempered however and never left to feed back indefinitely, instead the thrashing is cut dead like a dangerous snake having its head chopped off.

The band’s new album “Something for the Weakened” is due out this summer.

Written by a Thoroughly Modern Mister, Chris Kenny.