Malcolm Middleton , Sleight of Heart
MALCOLM Thomas Middleton Sleight of Heart (Wax Time Spare-time activity)Annunciate Military rating: * * * * Verdict: Glasgow poet-singer non quite as dour as beforeHis previous album, 2007's A Brighter Beat opened with the birdcall We're All Sledding to Die, offered up Death Lovemaking Natural depression Love Death along the way and then closed with another feel-good number Cheer Down. So to conclude that Malcolm Middleton has cheered up close to on this one - his second solo set since the 2006 dying of his indie-folk outfit Arab Strap - isn't locution much. Simply if this mini-album, an branch of A Brighter Beat with half a dozen originals and troika covers (including Madonna's Stay), isn't quite a as dour as its predecessor, it distillery offers more or less brilliantly bleak, dry-witted accounts of bodoni font life. And does it with a beguiling minimum of pother on songs that ar generally based about Middleton's broad accent of a vocalizing voice and his robust finger-picked guitar.He's at his bitter topper when he's sulking near staying-in existence the new going-out on Blue Plastic Bags, or contemplating what sounds like a wildcat want of self-esteem on Total Belief.
Simply having dispensed with that The Virgin track, as comfortably as ones by King Creosote, he ultimately offers up his bruised heart in the celastrus scandens love birdsong Hey You to last. Grim but captivating.Malcolm Thomas Middleton plays at the Kings Weaponry on Monday
