In anticipation of the release of their eighth work “I'm total okay with it don't give a fuck anymore”, we caught up with Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton to ask them a few questions about its creation, influences and themes contained in it. Written and played exclusively by the Scottish duo, the album continues the experimentation begun with the return to the scene "As Days Get Dark", shifting the balance further in the dance and indietronica direction: a vital impulse to reconnect with the surrounding world after the pandemic, and whose supporting tour will pass through Italy with three dates scheduled for the end of June.
So I’d start by asking you about the genesis of your new album, the gestation of which lasted two years, therefore a longer time than usual. Has something changed in your work approach compared to the past? Do you feel more free?
Malcolm: Not really… [laugh]
Aidan: I think definitely less. I don't feel any pressure in the way I did when I was young about making records, but I think that's more to do with age as well. I don't get nervous the way I used to about releasing a record. I think it was such a big deal putting a record out when we were young, and it was a make or break sort of thing. Your career had just seemed more intense back then, but I think certainly when I'm being older, I don't worry about things the way I used to. Things always seem to work out. I'm not terrified that someone's not going to like the record in the way I was when I was young. I would take bad views very personally when I was young, but as you get older… You don't give a fuck anymore. [laugh] I certainly feel freer in that way. I'm not scared of people not liking what we do.
Within the new record you explore new sound territories, in continuity with “As Days Get Dark”, and the emphasis is placed on dance and synth-pop impulses. Did you listen to anything in particular or were inspired by the work of any artist when creating the tracks?
M: I think we both listened to quite a broad range of music. We have different tastes, but we definitely like a lot of modern and old pop music, and guitar music and other things like that. We did have an idea at the start that we were going to make a bunch of pop singles. I was strapped pop singles, not like David Guetta or anything. So we wanted to have short songs that were catchy and melodic. After about four or five, we thought we've done enough. It's getting boring now, so we'll go back to do something just with different paces and dynamics and stuff. But that kind of started off the way that we thought the album was going to sound like direction.
A: There's a few songs that you can tell, like “Bliss” is an obvious one, where we were designing a single. But as Malcolm says, we got kind of bored with just working on singles. It would be a very boring record if everything was very happy and very upbeat. It was full of singles and pop music. I think we discovered that we also enjoy a wee bit of darkness still.
M: Yeah, if you have ten really good songs, it can get a bit dull. So we thought we'd put some filler in the middle. [laugh] I'm joking.
The album is pervaded by “quiet anger”, and is immediately noticeable with the strong opening, “Allatonceness”, underlined by influences that almost lead to metal and industrial music. It reminds me something like Rammstein in some passages. I was intrigued by its title and progress.
A: Rammstein, cool! [laugh] The title is a word that was coined by a writer called Marshall McLuhan in the Sixties. It's all at once-ness. It was about how media connects us to everything and everyone at the same time. He thought of this, I think it was 1968 or something like that. So he was very ahead of his time. It's a word that has become part of the discussion of internet connection and social media and stuff. I think it's in the dictionary now, actually. I haven't checked, but I'm sure it's in the English dictionary over here. As for the sound of the song, I'm not sure I hear metal in it. It reminds me very much of the music Malcolm and I used to listen to when we were young. Lots of noisy records. When we first met, I think, we were all listening to very noisy records. There's a band that we both love called the Happy Flowers that don't sound like that, but it's a good example of the chaos and noise that we used to listen to when we were young.
M: I'd say it's definitely got metal in it.
A: You! [laugh]
M: The loud bit is directly from Black Sabbath and also the solo's a bit like Slayer. So yeah, it's got a bit of metal. It's not metal as metal, it's more like a band called Happy Flowers with some really heavy music, and there were just two guys doing that. So yeah, Happy Flowers is a good example. Good reference.
The album themes are highly timely, particularly about connection and the lack of it between individuals, online and offline. And at the base of all this, with “Summer Season” you realized that everything was linked to the issue of the pandemic. Was there a before and after on a social level?
A: Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure. I think the pandemic changed a lot of people like that. I'm not sure it's all rooted in that, but I think it was a natural progression anyway. People were, you know, before the pandemic too, people were obviously communicating online more than they were in person. And I think that just sort of brought it into focus, certainly for me. And I found myself not, I still feel that I haven't really engaged with the world properly since then. But also, I mean, I'm getting older too, so I'm not, I don't go out as much. I don't go to shows as much. I have other things to do, so there's a lot of factors at play, but certainly that line in the song about pretending my lockdown didn't end is, it's also about making excuses for yourself, because I think I'm kind of quite bad at changing my mind. I'm going out tonight to see a friend, but when I woke up this morning, it was raining. And I thought, I don't know if I can be bothered anymore. And that's terrible, and I think that's a sort of frame of mind I would never have had when I was young. You know, when you were meeting a friend, when I was sixteen, twenty years old, meeting a friend, you had to arrange it in advance. You had to be there on time. Otherwise, no one would know where anyone was, and you couldn't change your mind. And I think that there's another way that the constant communication has destroyed physical relationships, because it's quite easy, everybody does it, it's quite easy just to not do something these days, you know, to make an arrangement and then just say, I can't be bothered. So yeah, I'm trying to force myself to go out. So I'm going to go out tonight and enjoy myself a lot.
In light of a song like “Socialmeter Blues”, I ask you what your relationship with social media is like today?
A: I use it mainly just for work now. I don't really engage with it at all. I used to enjoy Twitter. I used to, I would find myself getting into arguments with people. I used to think that was quite exciting, but it was an addiction. It was a strange, harmful addiction that I don't do anymore. I mostly just post about the band and things like that. Occasionally if it's something that, I mean, I don't post about anything controversial or anything anymore because it's just a waste of time, fighting with strangers is not a good use of anyone's time. But as I say, it was an addiction. That's what “Socialmeter Blues” is about. It was being addicted to that, that noise, and of course social media is designed to do that to you. It is literally designed to keep you on it as long as you possibly, it possibly can. And it is a mental addiction and that's the way it's designed. And that all changed when Elon Musk bought it and it became X, and it became much more apparent to me about when he changed the way the algorithms work. And suddenly I was seeing a lot more horrible people in my timeline that I didn't want to see. I realized that I had been duped into addiction by these things and that changed the way I saw it.
However, you don't completely abandon some original sounds, I'm thinking of song like “Molehills” and “Safe & Well”. The second one in particular struck me because of the story from which you drew inspiration. In Italy, similar stories have been talked about several times during the pandemic, but today everything seems very distant…
A: I think so. I mean, it's, we live in a sort of illusion, don't we? If you live your life online, you have this illusion that we all know each other and everyone is connected and you forget that people, some people just aren't really engaged with that sort of thing. It's very easy to forget. There are a lot of human beings who just aren't part of that. And the story that inspired it, apparently the woman only had one Facebook post and that was it. That was her entire online profile was one Facebook post. And the saddest thing was she was trying to find an old friend that she'd lost, like it was from twenty years ago or something like that. So I suppose that's what appealed to me about the story is that illusion that we live in this interconnected world and we forget there are still many, many people outside of that who don't engage with it at all.
In songs like “Bliss” there is a dark electronic that gives a sense of pressure and claustrophobia, and before we talked about anger and also pain, but coming to the end with “Turn Off The Light” we find conclusion with an “epic” feel. Is there still a glimmer of hope, or is it an illusion?
A: Well, there's always hope. Yeah, I think there's plenty of hope in the record too. I think I'm very fond of that. ["Bliss"] It's a very deliberately simple, straightforward song about letting people that are struggling know that you care about them, you know, things like that. And I think that that's all we can do. “Turn Off The Light” is really about conspiracy theories and not getting involved and how everyone's looking for answers, and how everybody seems to think they'll find answers by believing everything they read online from unqualified lunatics. But, yes, the hope is always there. I'm quite cheerful day to day. I get all the bad stuff out on records, but I'm quite an easygoing person.
Which is your most significant song on the album, that you feel more yours, and why?
M: My favourite one is “Strawberry Moon”, just because the music's great and the lyrics work. I mean, it's like one of Aidan's songs where, I don't think I knew what it was about until he explained it to me months later. And I just, I like the portrait of it. I like the melody, I like the way the song changes mood towards the end. So for me, that's one of the best Arab Strap songs I've made.
A: Honestly, I don't know. They all, they're all very different for different reasons. We've been rehearsing recently, so they sort of change a wee bit my attitude to them. So I'm trying to think, “Strawberry Moon” is one of my favourites too. I think we haven't played all the songs live yet, but definitely doing that one. That one came together very quickly and I enjoy that one. “Socialmeter Blues”, I really like. That's coming along in the studio as well as we rehearse. So yeah, it'd be one of those two, I think. “Socialmeter Blues” or “Strawberry Moon”, I think are my favourites on the record. But that'll probably change tomorrow or at the weekend when we rehearse again.
Is there any new artist or band that has caught your attention and that you appreciate?
A: Most of the music I listen to these days is quiet, classical influenced ambient stuff. There's an artist, Christina Vantzou, she's made five records on the Kranky label and very, very beautiful music. Eartheater, I'm very fond of her records. I mean, I don't really listen to rock music anymore. I don't really get it. I'm trying to think of a band now… [laugh] No, no, that's, yeah, Christina Vantzou, Eartheater. Laurel Halo's last album is excellent. Yeah, that's sort of the stuff I listen to mostly these days. It's very quiet, mostly instrumental sort of stuff.
M: I've been listening to a lot of Kurt Vile because I thought he had like one good record, then I realized he's got eight good records. So I've been going through that quite a lot, like a bit obsessively for about three weeks. And there's a new band called Lime Garden from Brighton that are really good. And I listen to Black Sabbath all the time. And the last couple of months as well, my wife pointed out the pattern. I've been listening to audio books, mainly by women who've had hard lives. I don't know why this happened. Like, I started with the Sinead O'Connor biography, but she's reading herself, which is quite sad considering she just died and other similar things. So that's kind of like my listening. It's just intense, traumatic biographies, which is great.
I have one last question to ask you: you finished the “Philophobia” celebration tour, and defined it as a way to say goodbye to your past songs. What should we expect from Arab Strap’s new concerts this summer?
M: More “Philophobia” songs were lied. [laugh]
A: Well, definitely. I mean, there might actually be two songs from “Philophobia” we still do. I think we've talked about keeping in our “New Birds” and “Here We Go”. But mostly we want to focus on the new stuff. I think with the band we have now, you know, we've kind of, the band don't play on the records, but I think we're quite conscious when we're making the records of how we're going to play the songs later with the band that we have. So they're kind of shaped around the band. I mean, there's so much of it to choose from. So I think it'll be mostly songs from the new album, songs from the last album and some favorites. A couple from “Philophobia”, there's another few, two or three we're going to try. There's one we might play for the first time ever from “The Red Thread” that we never, ever played back in the day. So yeah, we'll see. There'll still be a few old songs, but. Yeah, like we're not going to be one of those bands.
M: Like I saw Iron Maiden about ten years ago and they played their whole new album from start to finish. And then the two old songs in the crowd were raging. It's like, we know we need to please people by playing some of the stuff that people, that's why they like us. But at the same time, we've got to balance that with, we're really excited with new songs from this album and the last one that excite us more than the old ones. But we will, certainly there'll be a mix, but like heavily on the new stuff, I think.
Aidan and Malcom, thank you so much for your time and see you soon in Italy!
A & M: Thank you so much, see you soon!
