Malcolm Middleton, "A Brighter Beat"

Simon mentioned this record a month or two ago. It's been out for a while in the UK, but just got released here. If you caught the Mojo: Made in Britain free CD sampler last month, you might have heard "A Brighter Beat" in amongst the boy and girl bands...sounding sort of like a philosopher caught at McDonalds. Anyway wonderful, mordant, downbeat stuff from half of the now defunct Arab Strap. Here's the beginning of my Dusted review:It's a good thing Malcolm Middleton doesn't live in America. He'd be drugged to the gills on Prozac or Zoloft, barely able to hold a guitar aloft, and completely unequal to the sort of wry, ruminative epiphanies that lurk in every corner of A Brighter Beat. His third solo album – and the first since Arab Strap went dark in 2006 – is a landscape of depression written from the inside, full of people who can't leave their houses, yet who struggle feebly for love and meaning. That sounds depressing, but the record really isn’t, for a couple of reasons. There's a leavening sense of humor that holds off the self-pity, for one thing. Middleton breaks the litany of self-loathing and doubt in "Superhero Songwriter" to call himself a "super cliché chorus finder" ... and in the midst of a fairly soaring chorus, too. Moreover there's something funny about titling a song "Death Love Depression Love Death,” then making the cut one of the disc's fastest and most upbeat, at least musically. That brings us to the second factor that saves A Brighter Beat from emo-indie whining: it rocks. If you didn't speak English, the songs wouldn't even sound sad, let alone depressed. Take the title track, easily the disc's best and most conflicted. Mordant lyrics battle it out with synth bounces as Middletons sings, "Now you've gone and left me and there's nothing here / But a tenner in my pocket and a fridge full of beer / There's an army round the country / They're all stuck in a room / It takes a lot of preparation / To make a move." Downbeat, sure, but there's a lift here, too; you can hear it in the slant of eighth note guitars, the ratcheting drums, and in the sardonic twist of Middleton's Scottish burr. It sounds like he'll find a way out the door, down the street, and to the pub eventually, not matter how difficult it may be. (The rest is here: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/3640)And there are streams at MySpacehttp://www.myspace.com/malcolmmiddleton