Album Review: Malcolm Middleton - 'Waxing Gibbous'

(Full Time Hobby)

By Simon Miller
Epoch Times Staff
Created: Jul 10, 2009 Last Updated: Jul 10, 2009

This fifth solo album from one time member of Scots indie band Arab Strap is at its best when it’s comforting and evocative of an intimate Scottish folk melancholy that wraps itself around you in a confessional embrace.

It shares similar territory to Fife’s Fence Collective (and indeed King Creosote collaborates here). Lyrically most songs are dour yet heartfelt, the most unsettling, ‘Box and Knife’, touching on the suicidal.

Though other pieces drift towards the forgettable, Jenny Reeves’ warm vocal harmonies lighten the mood and the standout ‘Red Travellin Socks’ is even uplifting and celebratory.

Rating: 3 / 5