The last time your reviewer espied such an impressive beer bin onstage was when Guided By Voices played a blinding two hours-plus marathon across town at Cork's Half Moon theatre. But however much Bob Pollard's sadly deceased garage rock trailblazers might have known about refreshing themselves onstage, they didn't have that secret ingredient: salt.
"You wanna beer an' it's gottae be really fuckin' cold, right? says burly bassist Stuart Henderson, finally revealing his secret, several songs in. "There's water, ice and just a pinch a' salt in there." He moves across the stage, and with help of drummer Paul Savage and his new boss, MALCOLM MIDDLETON, takes a lengthy swig. He's satisfied. They all are. Well, a guy's got to get his priorities right, huh?
Thankfully - despite a past shaping some of the best-ever songs about the after effects of getting blitzed and being unable to keep your tadger in your trousers with Glasgow's Arab Strap - these days it seems Middleton knows as many tricks about writing killer songs and presenting them with a wryly amusing cynicism as he does about the rueful reality of permanently viewing life and lust from the bottom of a glass darkly.
Middleton's recent second solo album "Into The Woods" (theory: the title is surely the pessimistic opposite to the idea of coming out of the woods) was made with the help of assorted ex-Delgados personnel, and tonight he's joined by three of them in Henderson, Savage and keyboardist Alan Barr for what turns out to be a memorable, generous set full of mordant irony, fatalistic observations and a surprisingly impressive number of great tunes to boot.
In fact, the highlights start forming a queue from the word go: there's the Nick Cave-ish seduction of "Devastation", the well-drilled punkabilly thrill of "Break My Heart" ("Don't wannae sing these shit songs no more!") and the magnificent "Autumn", which opens with Middleton singing "Ah, autumn, you fuckin' cunt, fer bringin' me memories I dinnae want" and is quite probably the best love song written involving a man venting his spleen on the aftermath of summer.
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The sly humour and musical inventiveness continue with "No Modest Bear" and its' daft'n'cheesy '80s synth motif, and then drummer Savage joins Middleton on guitar for "Happy Medium" and its' house-y laptop beats and "Bear With Me" with its' Buzzcocks-style call'n'response guitars. Savage and Henderson then troop off - with further plunder from the beer bin - to allow Middleton and Barr to serenade us with the marvellous piano ballad "Choir" and its' super-fatal chorus of "Self-preservation affects us all/ Physical deterioration comes to us all", which is certain to be a favourite with the Sauchiehall Street afterhours set before much longer.
The band play intuitively all night and add some welcome colour and dimension to Malcolm Middleton's wonderfully macabre pop, yet somehow it's when he tackles the encore alone with only his trusty acoustic that the sparks really fly. He dedicates "Speed On The M9" to "anyone desperate enough to drive at 140 MPH wi'oot a seatbelt fer kicks", but - inevitably - it's the beautifully-poised soul-in-abeyance scenario of "The Devil & The Angel" that is arguably the evening's highest peak. Despite the unremittingly bleak tone of most of Middleton's lyrics, too, he actually leaves us with something surprisingly positive thanks to "The Best Of Me".
There's much more, of course, but with the beer all necked and the witching hour come and gone, we are reluctantly forced to let him go. No matter. Tonight was a misery-stuffed masterclass that simply breezed by and served as further notice that - for all his protestations that his songs are "shite" - Malcolm Middleton remains one of the best-kept solo secrets operating out there. And we should all drink to that.
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