Forget what else guest director David Shrigley might have pulled off for this year's Brighton Festival - the scheduling of his mate Malcolm Middleton, the outsiders' outsider, at St George's Church on Thursday will be his masterstroke.

You can see why the Scottish singer songwriter is often called a miserablist. His fridge is always empty except for a few tins of beer, he's always coming off a broken relationship and he rhymes soul destroying gloom with life threatening doom.

But there's something life affirming about this curmudgeonly, super-shy artist, a former member of indie favourites Arab Strap, that transcends his onstage persona, although on the latter he jokes he's taking stagecraft lessons which only started that morning.

Beginning with Gut Feeling sprinkling a few new un's while not neglecting the, for him, big uns its a fine set showcasing Middleton excellent guitar work and that dour but affecting Scottish accented singing of perfectly constructed songs. It really makes you wonder why so few Scottish artists sing in their own accents when it works so wonderfully here in these ballads on the travails of everyday existence.

One small quibble. It's not a good idea to have an audience in non-tiered seating watching an artist sitting down so that only the front row can seen anything other than the top of his baseball cap. Raise the stage people. It's not difficult! That aside this is a beautiful two hours in the company of a man who colours up the downside of life.

He ambles back on for an encore of Cheer Down and Devil and the Angel. On the former he sings, "if I keep my head down/ don't look in any eyes/ the locals might let me stay". A glorious outsider indeed.