For some unknown reason, Irish people seem to love misery more than life itself. Tommy Tiernan probably summed it up best when he said that Ireland is one of the only places that mistrusts people who smile (“Here he comes now – the happy fucker!”). Perhaps that’s part of the reason why former Arab Strap singer and king of all grumpy blokes Malcolm Middleton gets such a wonderful reception any time he plays in the country.
Tonight, the songwriter’s set is a stripped-down affair. Aided only by an acoustic guitar and a bottle of booze, he has us all mesmerised as he tells his cautionary tales of sadness, sex and sauce (of the alcoholic kind). If this was a gig by anyone else, it’d leave the lot of us searching for the nearest cliff to jump off afterwards. But Middleton’s dark humour keeps the despair in check. At one point, after a pretty bleak ‘Break My Heart,’ he tells us that he had the option of closing the bar but he knew we’d all “fuckin’ kill him,” so he chose not to. It’s this self-awareness that makes the Scotsman such a fantastic performer.
Introducing the superbly wicked ‘We’re All Gonna Die Someday’ as a tune we might have heard on the Hollyoaks Christmas special, Middleton turns the merging of the mundane with the profound into an art-form. During the performance we get some requests from the crowd, which the singer sometimes adheres to (and often jokes that we want him to play Black Sabbath songs) and when he fluffs the odd line during ‘Devastation’ (calling steak McCoy’s, snake McCoy’s) he’s happy to poke fun at himself. Set highlights include the gorgeous ‘Choir’ and the rapturously received ode to home drinking ‘Blue Plastic Bags,’ but pretty much everything Middleton sings soars to the stars. Superb stuff.
Edwin McFee