Malcolm Middleton - Waxing Gibbous
Before I even listened to Malcolm Middleton’s fifth studio album, I decided I was going to write the whole review without using the words “miserable” or “dour”. I banned myself from describing anything as “melancholy” or “downbeat”. It might well be like trying to write a Fall review without using the words “prolific” or “angry”, but I find there’s more to be enjoyed in the work of the Falkirk elegist if you reject cliché and try to illuminate the dark niche he’s carved for himself since his first solo outing in 2002. And although, as you’d expect, it’s not aural serotonin, there are more layers to this than the default “depressing”.
Waxing Gibbous bears all the hallmarks of a Middleton album – it’s at once romantic and tragic, introspective and insightful, joyful and, well, not so joyful. At one point, he rhymes “shadows” with “Haddows”, and in an instant sums up the collective experience of everyone who ever lived somewhere they didn’t want to be. But there are signs of something new emerging: electronics make welcome appearances here and there, the increasingly adventurous King Creosote pipes in backing vocals from Fife; there are hints of musical unrest. There’s light and shade, it’s strident and diffident, full of invention. He even confesses to almost rapping at one point, cementing his status as the Eminem of central Scotland. According to Malcolm, this is to be his last LP as Malcolm, too, although he’s not hanging up the guitar yet – new projects are promised.
That potential is perhaps the most exciting thing about Waxing Gibbous – as the album explodes into life with the epic, galloping, uplifting, creatively diverse Red Travellin’ Socks, you’re filled with an excited curiosity about what could come. Next on the album is another melodic belter, Kiss at the Station, an ambitiously atmospheric ode to love known and lost, whose breakdown features unexpected slap bass and Paul Simon-style backing.
Elsewhere, Carry Me is the most Arab Strap-like song he’s done alone – a regretful, spoken word lament to unfulfilled childhood dreams on a whimsical backdrop, brought down to earth with the line: “I’m sorry I missed Bowie’s Changes, I stumbled upon him dancing with his red shoes on and dismissed him as a cunt.”
Don’t Want to Sleep Tonight best showcases the new additions to the musical palette, with its simple offbeat drums, wistful Fence-abetted vocals and bouncy keyboard. And before Shadows gets the chance to turn into Lust For Life, it becomes another finely crafted, colourful electro-acoustic number with insistent lead lines and a swirl of male and female voices.
The most significant departure on the album is Box and Knife, which may or may not be about suicide, but surprises with panned bass kicks, ghostly cut-up samples and an almost jaunty, uneasy interlude redolent of the Cure. It all ends with a more conventionally Malcolm delicate acoustic number, Made Up Your Mind, but it’s a quiet farewell after a frantic introduction. If this really is Middleton's swansong, it's a fitting end to a solo chapter.