The Xcerts - There Is Only You (2014) Lossless

Aberdeen/Exeter 3 piece THE XCERTS will finally be releasing their hugely anticipated, 3rd studio album, ‘There Is Only You’ on November 3rd through Raygun Music. The new album is the follow up to 2010’s ‘Scatterbrain’, and was produced by both Dave Eringa (Manic Street Preachers, Idlewild) and long-term band friend Paul Steel. The band will also be on tour in the US with Brand New around the album release, with a UK/European tour to be announced in the coming weeks as well. "The record”, explains vocalist/guitarist Murray Macleod, "is about everything I've experienced in my life so far. They are about the past and how I've made some terrible mistakes, in romantic terms anyway, and learned a lot from them, which culminates in the last song on the record, 'There Is Only You'. That's about me getting to this point of finally being comfortable enough to be with one person for the rest of my life. But halfway through recording we took a break and the night I got home was the night she decided she didn't want to be with me anymore. We got back on Friday, and I went back to the studio on the Monday for the next three weeks to finish the album. So it's a weird twist to the tale of this record and I was completely lost in the second half of making the record." Even though its ten songs had been written by that point, it's nevertheless a record that straddles the gulf between love and loss, the joy of feeling whole and the ache of feeling empty, with pinpoint accuracy. That complex contradiction is something the trio - completed by bassist Jordan Smith and drummer Thomas Heron - infused their first two records, 2009's 'In The Cold Wind We Smile' and hurt following year's 'Scatterbrain', with in abundance, but here it feels more poignant, more fragile, more urgent than ever before, both for the listener and, due to his personal circumstances, Macleod himself.