"This is about bein' mental an' drivin' wi'out a seatbelt," mutters MALCOLM MIDDLETON as he stringently avoids eye contact and launches into the psychotic folk-blues of "Speed On The M9."
Some times the more things change, the more they stay the same. The last time your reviewer saw Falkirk's finest onstage, he was winding his sadness-drenched chords around Arab Strap cohort Aidan Moffat's pished, libido-obsessed ramblings as they supported the Tindersticks at a prestige London gig. Their stage presence was non-existent, their rhythm section was shadowy and they (naturally) all looked like they'd rather be down the pub. And yet the end result was utterly mesmerising. It's still one of the best gigs this reviewer has ever been to.
But, however great, dour and lumpen Moffat's' mumblings are/were, it's only when you see Middleton unadorned in acoustic mode you realise how much of whatever it is that makes Arab Strap special actually comes from him.
Superficially, there doesn't seem much to see here. He just sits cross-legged with thinning red hair and a penchant for delivering his songs with eyes resolutely closed. Sartorially, he's a non-runner, too: clad tonight in a chunky brown plaid shirt that makes him sweat copiously. His battered old acoustic has seen better days and the only obvious link with the Glasgow Chemikal Underground scene he's helped shape is the brown 'Rock Action' sweatband he's apparently purloined from Mogwai's promotional campaign.
Yet, as soon as those fingers start weaving spells, quietly desperate magic fills the air. He opens with a tune called "Autumn": it has a gorgeously melancholic chord sequence and finds Malcolm musing "It's funny how all the people I've loved I always push away." Blimey. Fatalism encapsulated in a soundbite.
He continues on with a set drawn mostly from his lone solo album "5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine". Anyone expecting him to tackle the Strap's sozzled songbook will be disappointed, but - to these ears - Malcolm makes even greater sense on his own, as tunes like the mordantly amusing "The Loneliest Night Of My Life Came Calling" and "Cold Winter" make abundantly clear.
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Indeed, so black is Malc's humour, he'd even give stone-faced Emperor of Doom Bill Callahan a run for his money on tunes like the brilliant "Crappo The Clown" and his "one and only" Christmas song which opens with the line: "I got knives for Christmas last year". Yet he appreciates the need to leaven the self-laceration and his set has room for tunes like "Ryan Air", where our hero ruminates on buying shares in the Irish carrier because "they're lo-fare." He completes the song to rapturous applause, glances up myopically and mumbles "Hmm, think I'll start flying BA from now on." It's a classic moment and then some.
If anything, though, he keeps his finest trump card in reserve for the end of the set. It's "Devil And The Angel", of course: a wonderful vignette of good and evil (or perhaps worse: abject apathy) slugging it out for our hero's soul. It's wry, desperately sad and hilariously funny all rolled into one, and Malcolm revels in the sting in the tail. I'll not spoil the ending, save to say it's a variation on grimly inevitable that you'll adore.
"I don't wannae sing these shit songs nae more," Malcolm spits in his wicked burr during new tune "Break My Heart." But you can trace the ghost of a smile on his lips as he sings it and you just know that inside he's loving this. With or without Aidan Moffat, Malcolm Middleton is a gifted entertainer and his darkness is every bit as attractive as it is threatening.
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