Send "Malcolm Middleton " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Musicomh |
 He's been labelled something of a miserablist by the music press, but is this really a fair tag to dump at Malcolm Middleton's door? On the evidence of the most recent offering from the prolific Falkirk singer/songwriter, it's a label well out of date. For sure some of Middleton's lyrics are not upward looking, but even when that's the case there is an underlying positive conviction. The way Red Travellin' Socks bustles in suggests a man on a mission, rather than someone stopping to navel gaze, and it's a bustle that keeps on through the record, even when Middleton does stop to take the chance to think. Before you ask, a 'Gibbous' is a puffed-out phase of the lunar cycle, describing the moon as it looks somewhere between its half and full phases. As far as Middleton is concerned, it's definitely more half-full than half-empty, so that even when he sings "rain is coming down, and I don't know what to do" in Kiss At The Station, he sings of a romantic dilemma rather than an extended bout of soul searching. And when the song reaches its exultant bridge passage, the listener is swept away with the possibilities....full text |
| Allmusic |
| Malcolm Middleton's 2009 album starts with a brisk as heck guitar rush of a song, "Red Travellin' Socks," which only seems appropriate for a musician who's appeared to have had endless energy to burn over the years in and out of Arab Strap. (And as is only appropriate, the song is all about hating said socks because they're all about travel and being away from his girlfriend.) With that as a killer start, Middleton and company burn through a set of excellent songs with confidence, ranging from other quick-as-hell rundowns to calm reflection. His trademark mordant wit and sharpness remain intact -- the spoken word break that runs through "Carry Me" covers everything from failed dreams of partying in Rio to regretting thinking of David Bowie "as a cunt," all addressed to a dead friend or lover, to name just one example of a song. (Titles include "Ballad of Fuck All" and "Love on the Run," the latter being one heck of an album ender with its conflicted sentiments about an end-of-the-line romance.) Musically there's a beautiful range at work as well, with the piano-led downbeat anthem "Stop Doing Be Good" and the brisk chug and surge of "Shadows" among the many different routes explored....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| Malcolm Middleton’s fifth (and, according to some interviews, last) solo album revisits A Brighter Beat’s vertiginous juxtapositions of self-doubt and synthesizer pop, of jangling indie rock and foul-mouthed depression. This is, after all, the songwriter that hitched one of his jauntiest hooks to a chorus of “We’re all going to die now,” and made some want to dance to it. With Waxing Gibbous, he’s back at it, sitting morosely, like a poison spider, at the center of tweener-pink concoctions of pop, electro, folk and rock. And he’s so good at the bitter-sweet, happy-sad connection that it may take a spin or two before you hear much beyond good-time pop. What’s changed – from Brighter Beat to now – is that Middleton seems to have given up on love as the consolation prize for failure and insufficiency. “Red Travellin’ Socks,” the album’s feel-good rocker, sounds what seems like a familiar theme: being on the road, away from loved ones, is no fun. Yet after an instrumental break, the mood changes, and Middleton wonders if the unnamed she is “sick of my face.” Bring them on, those traveling socks. The road may be lonely, but so is home, at least some of the time. There’s a refusal to believe in the happy-ever-after here, even in “Carry Me,” the prettiest of Middleton’s waltz-time ballads. The main melodic chorus seems to hope for connection, as it asks “Will you carry me / when my legs are gone / will you carry me home?” Yet the long-spoken word intervals hint at a never-was glamour that draws Middleton away from ordinary life and love and home. “I was convinced I’d be living in hotels and breaking in houses by now. I was under the impression that they’d be partying in Rio and yachts,” Middleton mutters. “Every day I check for my super power or special ability, but it’s still in the post.” The simple person-to-person settling of the chorus is no match for dreams of being a rock star or super hero or special agent. You get the sense that this character would almost have to lose his legs, in order to allow himself to be cared for....full text |
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