Matthew Macaulay-Lowe has a one track mind. "Complicated Situations" as one lyric calls them, are all the rage on his album Waiting For Al.

Matthew Macaulay-Lowe is a singer-songwriter of quite some talent. His are the sort of songs you might hear playing in the background of some intensely emotional scene on a teen drama.

The Crying Game:

The perfect couple have just split up, in a teary, sad, rainy scene. And as they turn to walk their separate ways, we hear a song like "Stand True".

There are some poetic gems hidden away on these tracks. "I heard you crashed/Doing 95/On the learning curve of life", Macaulay-Lowe sings on "The Consequences" about a girl who never thinks of...well, the consequences.

Let Us Sit Upon The Carpet And Tell Sad Stories:

"Settle Down" has something of the David Gray to it. There's a "Babylon" style drum beat to it that keeps it going. Once again, it's difficult-relationships heavy: "Filling up the holes your bomb has blown/shattering windows of happy homes". Mr. Macaulay-Lowe is clearly not a happy chap.

One of the stand out tracks is the duet: "Delay on the Line". There's a beautiful horn and string effect hiding somewhere in the background that lifts the tune above the rest. Yet again, the theme of splitting up comes through - this time from both sides of the relationship: "In hindsight, I didn't handle it right/And you should have been told long ago" sings Annie Macaulay-Lowe before Matthew joins in with the misery.

This is the Road to Hell:

By the time we get to "Reckless", the failed relationships take on a darker hue with phrases like "I hope you burn in hell". You'd never know from the gentle strumming and tender voice that the narrator had such horrific ambitions for his ex, but it's always the quiet ones, isn't it.

"Juxtaposed" sounds not dissimilar to the Sunday morning lazy lilt of Pulp's "Bar Italia". There is a break from the theme of breaking up being hard to do. Our hero now seems to be in a relationship where he has to convince the girl that she doesn't need someone else. Things are still complicated, but at least he isn't sobbing into his beer with this one.

Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Melancholy:

Final track, and title track "Waiting For Al" is short, sweet and returns swiftly to the album's main theme: "What a mess, What a glorious mess/I find myself in again", Matthew sings. It kind of sums up everything that has gone before.

Messes are seldom glorious, but this mess in particular may well go somewhere near approaching glorious-ness. It's the kind of melancholy that Jason Pierce of Spiritualized would take great pride in.

Taken as a whole, Waiting for Al is a misleading album that could, on surface level, be used for the purposes of a quiet evening in with a loved one. On a deeper level, it should probably be used for the purposes of a quiet evening in with a loathed one. The choice is yours.

05/06/04 - First published on www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire on this link