Malcolm Middleton - London Kings College - 20/3/07
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
Of course he opens with 'We're All Going To Die'. Of course he does. Brill. He follows it by playing the next two tracks from the marvellous 'A Brighter Beat', re-establishing the amount of time and thought he has put into the order of the tracks on that fine record.
The live sound is much more centred around the guitar as you may have suspected, and though the live band doesn't quite manage the pace and the tightness of the studio recording, this is far from unusual, is it? But if anyone's songs have enough raw brilliance to make light of the trivial problems of pace and polish, it's Mr. Middleton's.
He continues with 'You're Gonna Break My Heart', the opening track from his second record 'Into The Woods', and as with many tracks from that LP, the band seem a lot more comfortable, and as such moments drawn from it tend to provide the high points of the set.
What makes this an incredible live show is simply that the songs are so good. There's also an intimacy that comes from being stood in front of this man whilst he stands in front of you telling it like it is. You want to clench your fists and sing your heart out, although thankfully nobody actually does this, thereby not ruining the mood and spoiling it for everyone.
Although in love with the newest one, being relatively new to that second record it's 'Loneliness Shines' that claims the award for my favourite Malcolm Middleton song of the moment, and I am by no means disappointed when it rears its head - a truly special and rightfully well received moment.
Middleton ends the set by providing a nice lengthy encore which I believe includes a track off of his 1000 copies only 7" release 'Ryan Air Song', to the delight of the hardcore fans. It's just a shame that the whole thing couldn't have been on a bigger scale. Perhaps by the end of the tour they'll be knockin' the tunes out like something fast out of a thing that makes them go fast in the first place, like one of those machines that fires tennis balls or something, but regardless, I don't think there was a single person in that room that didn't have an amazing night.
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