A perfect meeting of mordant minds, Music and Words began seven years ago after the English cartoonist and artist David Shrigley, provided album artwork for the perennially downbeat Falkirk songwriter, Malcolm Middleton.
A master at manipulating reality to wondrous effect, Shrigley’s words are always sardonic and usually surreal. Middleton’s music – mostly driving beats and spare guitar lines – adds an urgency to these spoken word vignettes that are narrated by a host of actors and friends.
So, we get snapshots of an ageing monkey's regrets (Monkeys), a computer ponder- ing its own genius (A Computer) while the collection's crowning glory, Story Time, hilariously moves from children's TV play- fulness to an expletive-riddled, existential-fuelled, animal orgy.
Not your typical Christmas album, then.
