Fewer singer-songwriters have made suicide and self-loathing into everyman singalongs better than Malcolm Middleton on his earlier albums, particularly 2005’s Into The Woods: an electro-tinged sojourn into the consciousness of a tetchy middle-aged Jock that took the drink-addled tongue-in-cheek bile of former band Arab Strap and turned it into the Samaritans Goes POP!.

It was such a shame then to see the self-styled national stereotype turn, somewhat ironically, into a caricature of himself, on last album Sleight Of Heart: a dreary cliché-filled record that failed miserably to capitalise on the surprise Christmas anti-hit which preceded it, A Brighter Beat’s We’re All Going to Die.

Such cobwebs are banished from the off on Waxing Gibbous, with the delightful ditty Red Travellin’ Socks, a fully-formed folk effort that reminds us that home is where the heart is (and that everyone has a favourite pair of socks.) It’s the heart that he is then aiming at on the following song Kiss at the Station, which is Middleton of yore, all fraught with tension and doubt, having “waited long enough” for the eponymous embrace.

The synths of Into The Woods make a more than welcome return on Zero (after the gloomy acoustics and spoken word monologues of Carry Me) with Middleton lamenting that “I just can’t seem to get along with the man I have become” and drawling a fitting chorus that “there’s comfort in self-hatred / I need to return to form”, perhaps an apt description of the fact that Middleton’s subject matter wasn’t the problem on the last LP, more the delivery and the overall package. At just over six minutes, it’s one of the longest songs in a collection of rather long tracks, but never outstays its welcome, aided by its rickety, heartfelt denouement. He then uses a string section to see out Stop Doing Be Good, alongside a choir, transforming the song from quintessential Middleton folk to chest-thumping epic just before the four minute mark.

Don’t Want To Sleep Tonight does, however, drag on a bit, but Shadows, with its Police-aping intro and “do-do-do” refrain, shakes things up a bit, and Ballad Of Fuck All is ominous and brooding yet at the same time tender – Middleton begging his subject to “come home soon and save me”. Box & Knife is all electronics and drum effects, and is one of the album’s happier sounding (if that’s a word you can ever truly associate with Malcolm Middleton) moments, whilst Subset Of The World is one of the rockier offerings from the Falkirk troubadour. The album closes on Love On The Run, which from the offset nails its flag to the mast as a track which borders on epic, equal parts scuzzy noise and tender introspection.

Whilst Waxing Gibbous may not quite live up to the promise shown on that career highlight Into The Woods, it is at the very least a record that sees Middleton return to form, and suggests that there’s still enough bitterness and contempt in his veins to render him interesting to cynical bastards everywhere.

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