alcolm Middleton begins and ends Into the Woods with songs about (and titled about) the heart in which he sets out his stance on love. In opener “Break My Heart” he steers a punchy clean bang-along the keys stomper into worrying about whether the girl in question is going to break his heart or, worse still, “break my run of unhappiness and destroy my career.” He tempers this lose / lose situation with the self-deprecating confession that he doesn’t want to “sing these shit songs anymore.” There’s a strong aspect of being exposed to the world when he turns down the volume, and the moments of rawness are balanced by this blackened humour. The finale, “A New Heart,” is a rowdier, punkier cymbal smasher in which Middleton accepts a challenge to avoid swear words and slights on either himself or others he has loved. He manages in comical style without descending into downright silliness, leaving out the obvious potty mouthed rhymes at the end of lines. For a man who opens the rising piano tune “Autumn” with such an amazing slice of swearing as “Oh Autumn you fucking cunt / Bringing me memories I dinnae want” this isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Middleton’s second solo LP is a marked improvement on 2002’s very impressive, but ramshackle and ridiculously titled 5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine. It’s definitely more mature musically, but lyrically still inclined to mine the depths of self-doubt, failure, and loneliness as any sensitive young man’s diary. Where the Strap’s lyrics are always deeply personal, Middleton’s lyrics are still undoubtedly drawn from experience but they’re more easily applied to the experiences of everyone’s love life.

Even though songs like “Devastation” and “Monday Night Nothing” show signs of a real insecurity and dependency he steadies this with humour; poking fun at his own OTT sadness to keep from driving himself (and the listener) up the wall and out the door. There’s awareness that he’s walking two tightropes of self-ridicule and self-awareness above the void of unattractive self pity (see “Loneliness Shines” where he points out “Got it all and appreciates nothing”). In a world of music still afraid of facing real regionalism beyond merely grouping ‘movements’ of bands with the same postcode, its easy to view his broad defiantly Glaswegian accent and his half sung half spoken style as something outside of the processed music business world. Bullshit obviously, but still a nice thought.

The most Strap-like piece here is “A Happy Medium” (a duet with Eva’s Jenny Reeve filling in for Adele Bethel, now with Sons and Daughters) whose repeated lyric “My face is a disease” manages to trawl that sea of ‘not quite disco’ that they specialised in with the first two LPs. Relying on an upbeat trio of acoustic guitar (which he sometimes belts the living crap out of as well as treating us to his trademark finger picking), Cello and Piano as well as a few odd effects along the way, the music is a little busier and a lot less scrambled and lo-fi.

The EH Shepard style artwork helps to place a visual image with the music and smoothes out many of the darker lyrical moments, adding to the ‘emotionally lost’ (in the woods) metaphor. Malcolm Middleton is the boy lost in the woods; Christopher Robin without his best friend Pooh. Despite the many Bear references, the cutest of which is found on the handclapping and nightspot static layers of “Choir,” he never fully sounds like he’s settled. When he says all the bear needs is a hug, its evident he means himself. Even on “Solemn Thirsty” when he says “My gift to you, I’m gonna be a better person” it sounds like it’s a secondhand thought borrowed from About Schmidt as opposed to something he truly believes himself capable of. Aidan Moffat needs to step his game up with the next Arab Strap LP if he wants to keep the mic all to himself.