A Brighter Beat - Malcolm Middleton

Track list:

1. We're All Going to Die
2. Fight Like the Night
3. A Brighter Beat
4. Death Love Depression Love Death
5. Fuck It, I Love You
6. Stay Close Sit Tight
7. Four Cigarettes
8. Somebody Loves You
9. Up Late at Night Again
10. Superhero Songwriters

Running time: 45 minutes
Released: 2007

This album is a long-time favourite. I am surprised that it hasn't reached its decade yet because I have listened to it so much. The title track is one of my all time favourite songs too, brilliant and utterly relatable-to.

It starts with the most unlikely attempt at a Christmas single ever... That We're All Going to Die is pretty unarguable, but I'm not aware of it being stated so positively anywhere else. Here it has a catchy rhythm, a high tempo and a harmonised vocal in the chorus to take your mind off the existential angst that the title conjures up. Its a joke track really, but it launches the overall tone of the music on this record well. What follows next is a step up though. Jenny Reeve (aka Strike the Colours) duets with Malcolm on Fight Like the Night. She gets the first vocals, responsibility for the chorus and offers a response to his calls in the verses. Meantime the wailing guitars, pacy drums and general hum of the arrangement sets off their voices really well. There is a drive to the first three songs on this album that is pretty consistent; they all offer different things but that pace offers a touchpoint, a reference. 

A Brighter Beat has a properly catchy rhythm and the hook on the guitar for the lead in is amazing. Seeing Middleton play this live is mind blowing for me, as a non-guitarist. On record he has several of the things to create structure and melody (though he leans on keys a bit for the latter); on stage he creates a decent facsimile of it with just a semi-acoustic. The song itself is about escaping or coping with depressive episodes, a theme that resonates through much of the album, and one that no doubt helps me connect with this record in the way that I do. I think this track is Middleton's best work, solo or otherwise, capturing a state of mind in a 4 minute pop song; giving depression the focus, but never allowing the song to be depressing.

We get a bit of an interlude as the next track opens up lighter, slower, softer. It doesn't last. The same driving pace - rapidly repeating notes with percussive support - arrives and gives a snarl or growl to the song. I find myself not wanting to type out the title for length, but typing this longer sentence instead. The oddness of the human mind. The actual lyrics aren't as dark as the title, and offset the rumbling darkness of the arrangement in their delivery. It all builds and then suddenly crashes shut to be replaced by what I can only describe as a jauntily melodic love song. A simple repeating hook bores into my head on this listen; normally my ear is drawn to the lyrics. I think the difference here is that I don't have engine and road noise drowning out the lower end of the register - this album spends a fair share of its time in the car. There's a crescendo in the middle where it gets a bit more edgy but that is just a passing moment and we return to the longing in the lyrics, where Reeve (I think) is backing up again, harmony this time.

A darker, slower tack next. Stay Close Sit Tight has a bassy start. This song really rams the depression angle front and centre of its performance. What Middleton describes is familiar - particularly not wanting to see yourself, others or speak to people on the phone. It gets more nail-on-head later, with a line about making plans by agreeing with things someone else proposes only to cancelling. Whilst the topic is a difficult one, he crafts around it a nice, noisy cocoon of guitars. The brass that provides backing here is used really well, not something you hear on every composition. Four Cigarettes has one of the most recognisable openings for me - a little keyboard loop that quickly gets replaced by the primary structure of the song, but which does resurface a little way in. The keyboard part is where most of the appeal lies in this number; I used to like it a lot more than I do now. I am not sure why that is. Somehow I just feel a little removed from it these days. I was never a smoker, and never more likely to want to be outside after dark when my moods dipped this low so I don't relate, but would never quite have related at my darkest, either.

Somebody Loves You is a simpler tune, one hook or riff sustains the vast majority of the track and it washes over me. It is probably the weakest number on the album. Some might find it touching but me, here and now, I find it very repetitive and lacking the rich depth that the wider arrangements, present on the other tracks, provide. The penultimate track is stately in pace, epic in scope, and reassuringly rich in the chorus. This is a much more engaging love song than the one before. Middleton's songs tend to be self absorbed - more about the lover than the loved; I suspect this too comes from the blackness of battling mental demons. I am distracted by the jangling top end for a bit and lose my train of thought as the song draws down and we enter the closer.

Big bold Bond-movie sounds kick off Superhero Songwriters, but the actual song is immediately stripped back and becomes less bombastic, more fragile, but those brassy focus points are in the locker to separate out our verses. There is a good dollop of self-deprecation in the lyric, that has always endeared me to Malcolm. The song itself is split in two (just as well given its length). The latter half is arranged very differently, less punchy after a keyboard takes over the melody, then the bigger arrangement of guitar drones and lines come in to build a really big and sustained canvas of sound. Picking out any one part gets tough for me as the aural wall all fills with colour. As the page saturates it is flipped and the lonely acoustic guitar returns to pick us out the core melody one final time before the curtain falls. 

Most of this album is just a solid "good", but I relate to it a lot so as a whole it has wormed its way into my favourite things. The real high points though are just superb, 10 of 10 numbers that I keep returning to again and again. I suspect that will last a while yet - at least whilst I remain prone to lonely little episodes where I feel like an impostor and teeter on the edge of regression to a general darker place. These happen from time to time, but in general I am in a happier spot than when I first latched on to Middleton's music. I remain incredibly grateful for his ability to expose similar feelings in this way, however.