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“We’re all going to die, what if there’s nothing? We’ll all have to face this alone. There’s a when not an if inside everybody, mortal thoughts like this can make you feel so alone. You’re gonna die, you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die alone, all alone…” chirps Malcolm Middleton over a weighty bass line and manic electro-pop synths.
He might now be skipping to a slightly brighter beat, but Middleton’s less than cheery side saturates ‘We’re All Going To Die’, the opening track of the former Arab Strap guitarist’s third solo effort. There are glimmers of hope that shine through the grey haze, however. ‘Fuck It, I Love You’ sees Malkie give in to his heart, before the fear and self doubt creep back for ‘Four Cigarettes’.
‘A Brighter Beat’ bolsters Middleton’s solo work, building on the perfection of 2005’s ‘Into The Woods’ and acknowledging the raw honesty of 2002 debut solo effort ‘5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine’.
Middleton’s first record is a tortured, bleeding wound of a record, full of dark depression, misery, loneliness and self-loathing. He admits he has difficulty with it, and that he wouldn’t ever listen to it. “There’s songs that I’ll definitely never ever play again live, either I just don’t like them or I don’t want to sing about that stuff,” he confesses. “If I listen to my first album I cringe quite a lot. I think I was too… I did write that for myself and when I was writing it I didn’t expect other people would hear it. I must have done at some point, but I always managed to put barriers up so I wouldn’t think about what other people were thinking.”
‘A Brighter Beat’ isn’t a massive move away from Malkie’s earlier material, but it certainly feels like a new chapter. Musically, it’s meatier, with bursts of sanguinity that battle with the sadness.
Despite being a constantly failing perfectionist, Middleton is happy with his latest collection of work. “I remember when I finished the album… I was happy with it and I was also really confused about it, it took me a few weeks to get into it and enjoy it because I spent so much time doing it I think. I’d never spent three months making a record before,” he recalls.
“I do like it, I’m looking forward to playing it live. I think in the last couple of weeks that I’ve listened to it again… it’s just like hindsight basically because I don’t just want to be a perfectionist, but there are a few things that I would maybe change. But I’m not going to say what they are!”
Middleton doesn’t write when he’s happy – boredom mainly fuels his creativity. With this album he feels things have changed slightly, becoming a little less introspective. “There’s still the macabre stuff there, maybe talking about depression or bits like that, but it’s not as wallowing as the previous albums,” he says. “Sometimes it’s fun to wallow and then it’s fun to laugh at yourself for wallowing too much. I like to think that with this one other people can maybe get a bit more from it rather that just seeing what I’m doing y’know.”
In November of last year, Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat played their last gig together. After ten years of tears, the story of Arab Strap had reached its conclusion and Falkirk’s finest musical pairing came to an end.
The decision to dissolve the band was mutual. “I phoned up Aidan, we’d just finished a long American tour and I was phoning him up to say ‘I don’t want to do it anymore’. I phoned him and he said to me first that he didn’t want to do it anymore,” Middleton recalls. “So it was quite easy and we kinda had a laugh about it and went and had a beer and said it would be good to do something together again in the future, but we just don’t want to be Arap Strap anymore. We don’t want to be the band, we don’t want to do the kind of music that Arab Strap had been doing.”
The band had had its run for the pair. “We couldn’t do anything else worthwhile and we didn’t really want to, and we were both enjoying music outside of Arab Strap. I really got a lot more satisfaction from my last solo album than I did from the last Arab Strap album.”
Arab Strap’s final studio album, ‘The Last Romance’, was hailed by critics as the band’s finest work of their career, a statement that really annoys Middleton. “Aidan’s really happy with [the positive comments] after what I’ve said about [the album],” he admits. “He’s like, ‘I told you so’. I don’t know if it is our best – it’s the shortest, maybe that’s what they mean! To me there’s not as much depth to it. There are some really good songs but the Arab Strap thing for me was about moods and atmospheres and [‘The Last Romance’]is kind of like a poppy record with not very poppy songs on it.
“I found it difficult because after doing (second solo album)‘Into The Woods’, which is probably a total ego thing, I enjoyed that because I could make music that I really wanted to listen to and that I wanted to make. With Arab Strap I was going back into a situation where we have to compromise with each other and I didn’t like the way it was going. To me that album sounds like demos and it’s a shame,” he says. “I’d really like to do a lot more to it but I don’t even think about it anymore. The album’s ok, it’s a good album, but I wasn’t happy making it and I wasn’t completely happy with the finished result.”
Middleton may now be free from the constraints of a band, but being on his own after so long hasn’t properly sunk in yet. “It feels bad but good at the same time. I’m glad we’ve done it… but maybe if this all goes wrong in a year’s time we’ll be either signing on or starting up again. It’s hard but really refreshing. It’s risky because you don’t have it anymore but I don’t know, we were just getting too complacent, I’m glad this is happening. And whatever happens from now on, I’ll have done it.
“It feels like coming out of school again or something. You know when you first finish high school and you’re like ‘What the fuck is going on? I don’t have that institution behind me anymore’, it’s a bit like that. There’s no big machine underneath me when I wake up in the morning,” he laughs. “I have no idea what I meant by that but you know what I mean!
“We didn’t expect anything at the start, we were just a DIY four-track band making demos for our mates and stuff. I don’t think anyone was more surprised than we were when Steve Lamacq and John Peel started playing our single, and the fact that we managed to keep that momentum for a further ten years is amazing. It’s been good, it’s been great, it’s been my life for ten years.”
Whilst Arab Strap picked apart the sordid aspects of life, love and human relationships through spoken word narratives and grimy realism, Middleton chooses a decidedly more palatable vehicle to deliver his tales of depression and melancholy. Middleton rarely penned lyrics for The Strap, but now with a blossoming solo career he has the chance to bare all.
“I really wasn’t wanting to express myself publicly or put myself forward as being a lyricist or anything like that. At that time I didn’t have much to say I don’t think, I was just kinda going along in life not going too deep, maybe just not being so happy but not thinking so much and being quite shallow. But later on I must have needed to do something, then my first album and my second album then I just started getting a bit more confidence in myself and thinking that I could write OK songs.”
Middleton’s confidence boost has served him well. ‘A Brighter Beat’ is a phenomenal album, which should hopefully see wider recognition for the Scotsman after its release in late February.
“I’m lucky that so far, I don’t know how long this is going to last, but right now I can do it and it kind of pays the bills and I don’t have to worry about getting a proper job,” he jokes. “Whatever happens I think I’ll always play guitar and write songs and stuff, whether people are hearing them or not.”
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