Malcolm Middleton has already released four albums as the guitarist with Arab Strap; one listen to his debut solo album and you wonder why he didn't kick Aidan Moffat from the microphone years ago. Where Moffat mumbles morosely, Middleton has a warm, immediately engaging voice that makes even his saddest songs sound strangely joyful. He has a real knack for marrying self-deprecating lyrics with dancing, luminous melodies: "I'm hopeless, I don't have a clue," he booms on Wake Up, guitar and drums clattering exuberantly. The Loneliest Night of My Life Come Calling, meanwhile, has the tipsy boldness of a fabulous drinking song. "I'll never be good at anything and my songs are pish," Middleton frets in Devil and the Angel. He couldn't be more wrong. [4/5]
MADDY COSTA
METRO
No one could have doubted the emotional state of Aidan Moffat on listening to Arab Strap. Less clear, perhaps, was how his sidekick Malcolm Middleton distilled that state so perfectly into music. Middleton answers that on 5.14, a record so woebegone and ridden with self-doubt it's a wonder he eve manages to get out of bed. he's cavalier with ideas here: the sorrowful, piano-soaked Crappo the Clown builds into a lovely sweeping chorus. the endearingly noisy Wake Up, sounds as though it was bashed out in the pub. He staggers through his wet and broken bedsit songs half weeping and half laughing and for a record built from emotional wreckage, it's full of life and soul.
MOJO
Solo debut from Arab Strap guitarist. Version of The Sun Has Got His Hat On not included.
Whatever's ailing Malcolm Middleton - and fluoxytine [sic] is the generic name for Prozac - an inflated sense of his own worth isn't exactly top of the list. On album closer 'Devil And The Angel' he proclaims: "I'll never amount to anything/I'll never achieve anything/I'll never be good at anything...and my songs are shite". The preceding 50 minutes have demolished the last assertion, at least. As a documentary of personal abjection, '5:14...' is brutal and sometimes harrowing in its frankness, yet Middleton is too accomplished a composer to pass off mere misery as art. There's abundant humour to leaven these tales of loveless nights and hopeless days, with the inebriated sea-shanty 'Crappo The Clown' affirming both the man's arrangement skills and the emotive qualities of his crumpled Caledonian croon. when it's bleak, there're none more bleak, but a very special record all the same.
KEITH CAMERON
NME
Solo debut from Arab Strap chap.
As 50 per cent of Arab Strap, malcolm Middleton's concerns (essentially booze, birds and beards) were reassuringly, if bleakly predictable. Here we find the guitarist has given the Strap's hobnailed death marches wings and, crucially, a heart.
While 'Best In Me' and '1, 2, 3, 4' recall the bruised confessions of old, the rest of this magical debut is cradled in a snug snood of avant-effects, with spectral synths and gospel-shaped harmonies carrying Middleton's bedsit blues high above the forest of self-indulgence. Bathed in pathos and dusted with melodrama, this is, essentially, a soap-opera set to a gentle folk-pop beat. Painspotting for romantics. [8/10]
SARAH DEMPSTER
The Fly - September 2002
Blessed with the task of adding music to the freakishly beautiful poetry of Aidan Moffat, Malcolm Middleton has stepped aside from Arab Strap to produce an album that not only touches on the magnificent elegance of said down-tempo masters, but in places surpasses it. Like Moffat, Middleton will never win Pop Idol for his singing abilities (or looks, come to that) but his voice is all the more attractive for what he has to say; love songs are couched in darkness and pain rather than gloss and sugar, anger is merely a quiet contemplation and a clever phraseology.
The music does most of the talking, veering from near-alt-country territory to celtic folk influences to lo-fi electronic tomfoolery. Opening track ‘Crappo the Clown’ and catchy-as-hell ‘The King of Bring’ employ a kind of choir for backing vocals that sounds like monks under heavy sedation, while other highlights are too numerous to mention here. Ah, miserabalist joy, thou art my friend once more. [4/5]
ELLIOT REUBEN