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This is a stark and startling revelation. A musical slap in the face
that leaves an intoxicating tingle. A set of songs, so jauntily
fatigued, so open and brutally honest, so aching and bright. Malcolm
Middleton has spent so long framing the mildew melancholia of Arab Strap
in nicotine-stained sepia that the sheer blistering thump and rush of
Into The Woods is dizzying.
Against a set of beautifully realised backdrops, Middleton sings of
the dark spaces and empty places on the flipside of happiness. His
voice is warm and ragged, a Falkirk burr adding fragile humanity to his
musing.
The single Loneliness Shines is a bloodrush of memory and melody,
built around an acoustic guitar that slices like a switchblade through
the swathes of My Bloody Valentine swirling ambient pop. Controlled
heartbreak, a platinum plated howl.
Bear With Me opens with sharp clusters of white noise before it
expands out into a brittle early New Order shuffle all melodic bass
and desolate strings. It then morphs again into a delicate reverb
drenched coda.
No Modest Bear is slinky and funky. A keyboard riff booms out, as
Middleton twists his words around the vigorous rhythm. It's like
Stevie Wonder's Superstition with a Buckie induced hangover. A Happy
Medium is collision of sharp beats and jangling guitars. Choir is perfect
off-kilter pop, edgy warped disco beats and synth hand claps dragged
along by an undertow of sparse piano notes and elegiac cello. Solemn
Thirsty is like the rush of wave up a shingle beach in winter. Clanging
snares and a gloomy bassline tussle with a bright plaintive guitar riff as
Middleton sings of his self doubt and the fears of aging. Real death
disco.
Eastenders gets a name check on the grim anti-Christmas hymn, Burst
Noel. A gentle finger-picked guitar and chiming Christmas bells back
Middleton's bitter ruminations. The piano-led Autumn opens with a
powerful lyrical stab that I don't want to spoil, its spills from the speakers
like morning-after bile. The music sways around a circling piano and
cello motif, until an anguished guitar solo briefly cuts through.
Middleton: resentful of the painful memories that autumn always ushers into his
mind.
Lyrically this is magnificent stuff. The lines are endlessly quotable.
They cut through to the marrow of love and loss with a rapier-like aim.
Self-deprecating, self-flagellating, bitter, humble, funny, bleak,
hopeful. It would be unjust to Middleton to rip them out of context.
There is no attempt to sugar-coat his observations, his eye is
unwavering, his pen unforgiving. The darker more uncomfortable edges of the
material are made palatable by the beauty and breath of the music. In a
world where Chris Martin's empty clichés escape criticism, it's refreshing
to hear someone pen words so original and execute them with such
verve.
An album to lose yourself in, to cherish and warm your soul.
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