Human Don't Be Angry – Human Don't Be Angry

Working with a pseudonym borrowed from a German board game, Human Don’t Be Angry sees Malcolm Middleton in an appropriately playful mood. Opener The Missing Plutonium lounges like Don Henley’s Boys of Summer given a retro-futurist reshuffle, while H.D.B.A. Theme further clarifies the album’s combination of guitar-based vistas and looped cores. Both tracks impress by blowing open expectations, pushing Middleton into new, but intuitively grasped, territories.

In early HDBA live shows, Middleton struggled to fully embrace this altered direction, saying: “I’d always, after two or three instrumentals, think ‘shit, I need to give them a song!” The album, deliberately or otherwise, is similarly structured, with vocals henceforth used intermittently: sometimes incorporated in fairly unorthodox ways (First Person Singular, Present Tense’s searching mantra); other times towards more straightforward ends (epically eighties-esque ballad Asklipiio). Regardless, HDBA’s tabula rasa has done a fine job of both revitalising Middleton’s palette and nourishing his muse.