Arab Strap - Honest, hateful love songs

Ahead of the release of their eighth record “I'm totally fine with it don't give a fuck anymore”, we caught up with Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton to ask them a few questions about how it came together, its influences, and the themes running through it. Written and played entirely by the Scottish duo, the album carries forward the experimentation begun with their comeback record “As Days Get Dark”, tipping the scales further toward dance and indietronica: a vital impulse as well as a push to reconnect with the world around them in the wake of the pandemic, and whose supporting tour will pass through Italy with three dates set for late June.

I'd like to start by asking about the genesis of your new record: it had a two-year gestation, so a longer period than usual. Has anything changed in your working method compared to the past? Do you feel freer?

Malcolm: Not really… (laughs)

Aidan: Definitely less, I think. I don't feel any pressure like I did when I was young making records, but I think that has more to do with age. I don't get as worked up as I used to when we'd put out an album: I think it was a big deal when we were young, and it felt like a crucial decision. Your career seemed more intense back then, but I definitely think that as I get older I'll stop worrying about things the way I used to. Things always seem to work out. I don't have the dread that someone won't like the record the way I did when I was young. Before, I used to take bad opinions very personally, but when you get older… You just stop giving a damn. (laughs) I definitely feel freer this way. I'm not afraid that people won't like what we do.

On the new album you explore new sonic territory, continuing on from “As Days Get Dark”, with an emphasis on dance and synth-pop impulses. Were you listening to anything in particular, or did you draw inspiration from any specific artists while writing the tracks?

M: I think we were both listening to a pretty wide range of music. We've got different tastes, but we definitely both like a lot of modern and old pop music, guitar music and that kind of thing. At the start we had the idea of making a load of pop singles. I was short on pop singles, not like David Guetta or anything like that. So we wanted to have short songs that were catchy and melodic. After about four or five, we thought we'd done enough. It's getting boring now, so we'll go back to doing something with different rhythms, dynamics and things. But at first we thought the album would sound like one direction.

A: There are a few songs you can recognise, like “Bliss” obviously, which we were planning as a single. But like Malcolm says, we got sick of just working on singles. It would be a really boring record if everything was really happy and upbeat. It was full of singles and pop music. I think we discovered that we still like a bit of darkness.

M: Yeah, if you've got ten really nice songs, it can get a bit boring. So we thought we'd throw in some filler in the middle. (laughs) I'm joking.

The album is steeped in a “quiet rage”, and you notice it right away from the powerful opener, “Allatonceness”, underscored by influences that almost point towards metal and industrial. It reminds me of something close to Rammstein in places. The title and character of the track caught my attention.

A: Rammstein, brilliant! (laughs) The title is a word coined by a writer called Marshall McLuhan back in the sixties. It's all-at-once-ness. It was about the way media connects us to everything and everyone all at once. I think it was 1968 or something, so it was way ahead of its time. It's a word that's become part of the discussion around internet connection, social media and the like. I think it's actually in the dictionary now. I haven't checked, but I'm sure it's in the English dictionary here. As for the sound of the song, I'm not sure I hear metal in it. It reminds me a lot of the music Malcolm and I listened to when we were young. Lots of noisy records. When we first met, I think, we were both listening to very noisy records. There's a band we both love, called Happy Flowers, who don't sound like this, but they're a good example of the chaos and noise we listened to when we were young.

M: I'd say there's definitely some metal in there.

R: You! (laughs)

M: The heaviest part comes straight out of Black Sabbath, and the solo is a bit like Slayer too. So yeah, it's got a bit of metal in it. It's not metal as such, but it's more like a band called Happy Flowers with really heavy music, and it was just made up of two guys. So yeah, Happy Flowers is a good example. A good reference point.

The album's themes feel very current, especially the connection between individuals online and offline, and at the root of that, with “Summer Season” you realised it was all tied to 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 in that way. I'm not sure everything is rooted in that, but I think it was a natural progression anyway. You know, even before the pandemic people obviously communicated more online than in person. And I think that brought it into focus, definitely for me. And I didn't realise, I still feel like I haven't really engaged with the world since then. But I'm also getting older, so I don't go out as much. I don't go to that many shows. I've got other things to do, so there are a lot of factors at play, but certainly that line in the song about pretending my isolation isn't over is also a way of making excuses for yourself, because I think I'm terrible at changing my mind. Tonight I decide to go out 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 any more. And it's awful, I think it's the kind of mindset I never would have had when I was young. You know, when you met up with a friend, when I was sixteen, twenty years old, you had to arrange it in advance. You had to be there on time. Otherwise no one would have known where anyone was and you couldn't change your mind. And I think there's another way constant communication has destroyed physical relationships, because it's pretty easy, everyone does it, it's pretty easy these days not to do something, to make an arrangement and then just say you can't be bothered. So yeah, I'm trying to force myself to go out, tonight I'll go out and have a great time.

In light of a track like “Sociameter Blues”, what's your relationship with social media like today?

A: Now I mainly just use it for work, I'm not interested in it at all any more. I used to like Twitter. I'd find myself arguing with people. I thought it was quite exciting, but it was an addiction. It was a strange, harmful addiction, which I no longer have. I mostly just post about the band and things like that. I don't post about anything controversial or anything any more, because it's just a waste of time, arguing with strangers isn't a good use of anyone's time. But, like I said, it was an addiction. That's what “Socialmeter Blues” is about. It was an addiction to that, to that noise, and obviously social media is designed to do that to you. It's literally designed to keep you there for as long as possible. And it's a mental addiction, and it was designed to be exactly that. Everything changed when Elon Musk bought it and it became X, and for me it became a lot more obvious when he changed how the algorithms worked. Suddenly I was seeing a lot more horrible people in my timeline that I didn't want to see. I realised I'd been lured into an addiction to these things and that changed the way I saw it.

That said, you haven't completely abandoned your original sound, I'm thinking of songs like “Molehills” and “Safe & Well”. The latter, in particular, struck me for the story that inspired it. In Italy I also read about a couple of similar stories during the pandemic, but today it all feels distant…

A: I agree. I mean, we live in a kind of illusion, don't we? If you live your life online, you have this illusion that we all know each other and that everyone is connected, and you forget that some people aren't really involved in that sort of thing at all. It's very easy to forget. There are so many human beings who simply aren't part of it. And as for the story that inspired the track, apparently the woman had just one Facebook post, that was it. Her entire online profile was one Facebook post. And the saddest thing was that she was trying to find an old friend she'd lost touch with, like it was twenty years earlier or something. I think what drew me to the story is the illusion that we live in this interconnected world and we forget that there are still so, so many people outside of it.

In a song like “Bliss” there's this dark electronic sound that creates a sense of pressure and claustrophobia, and earlier we talked about anger and also pain, but arriving at the end with “Turn Off The Light” we find a conclusion with an almost “epic” feel. Is there a glimmer of hope, or is it something illusory?

A: Well, there's always hope. Yes, I think there's a lot of hope on the record too. I think I'm very fond of it. (“Bliss”) is a deliberately simple and direct song about letting people who are struggling know that you care about them, you know, that kind of thing. And I think that's all we can do. “Turn Off The Light” is about conspiracy theories and not getting drawn in, and how everyone is searching for answers and seems to think they'll find them by believing everything they read online from unqualified lunatics. But yeah, hope is always there. I'm pretty cheerful day to day; on records I manage to let out all the bad stuff, but I'm actually a fairly easy-going person.

Which song on the album do you consider the most significant and feel is most your own, and why?

M: My favourite is “Strawberry Moon”, simply because the music is fantastic and the lyrics work. I mean, it's one of Aidan's classic songs, I don't think I knew what it was about until he explained it to me months later. And I just love the picture it paints. I like the melody, I like the way the track changes mood towards the end. So for me it's one of the best songs Arab Strap have ever made.

R: Honestly, I don't know. They're all very different for different reasons. We've been rehearsing recently, so that's kind of changed my attitude towards them a bit. Let me think; for me too “Strawberry Moon” is one of my favourite tracks. I think we haven't played all the songs live yet, but we'll definitely do that one. It came together very quickly and I love it. I really like “Socialmeter Blues” too. That's been happening in the studio from the moment we started rehearsing. So yeah, it would be one of those two, I think: “Socialmeter Blues” or “Strawberry Moon”, I think those are my favourite tracks on the record. But things will probably change tomorrow or over the weekend, when we rehearse again.

Is there any new band or artist that has caught your attention and that you're into?

A: Most of the music I listen to these days is quiet ambient stuff with classical influences. There's an artist, Christina Vantzou, who has made five records for Kranky, and it's really, really beautiful music. Eartheater, I'm very fond of her records. I don't really listen to rock music anymore. I don't really get it. I'm trying to think of a band right now… (laughs) No, no, that's it, Christina Vantzou, Eartheater. The latest album by Laurel Halo is excellent. Yeah, that's mostly what I'm listening to at the moment, very quiet and mostly instrumental.

M: I've been listening to a lot of Kurt Vile because I thought he had one good record, then I realised he has eight good records. So I went through that in a pretty obsessive way, for about three weeks. There's a new band called Lime Garden, from Brighton, who are really good. And I always listen to Black Sabbath. And also, over the last couple of months, my wife has pointed out a pattern. I've been listening to audiobooks, mostly by women who've had hard lives. I don't know why that's happened. For instance, I started with Sinead O'Connor's biography, but she reads it herself, which is pretty sad considering she's just passed away and everything. That's my kind of listening at the moment. Just intense, traumatic biographies, which is great.

I'll leave you with one last question: you've wrapped up the anniversary tour for “Philophobia” and called it a way of saying goodbye to those older songs. What should we expect from Arab Strap's new shows?

M: More songs off “Philophobia”, that was a lie. (laughs)

A: Well, actually there might be two tracks from “Philophobia” that we still play. I think we talked about keeping our “New Birds” and “Here We Go”, but we mainly want to focus on the new material. I think in a way the band doesn't sound like “the records”, but we're quite aware, when we make the albums, of how we're going to play them: we work the songs out afterwards with the band we've got, so they end up shaped around the group. I mean, there's so much to choose from. So I think it'll mostly be songs from the new album, some from the previous record, and a few favourites. A couple from “Philophobia”, and there are a couple more, two or three we'll try out. There's one we might play for the very first time ever, from “The Red Thread”, which we've never, ever played before. We'll see. There'll still be a few old songs, but we'll play them as if we're not the band we were back then.

M: For instance, I saw Iron Maiden about ten years ago and they played their new album from start to finish. And then the two old songs had the crowd going wild. It's like we know we need to please people by playing some of the stuff they like, but at the same time we need to strike a balance; we're really excited about the new songs on this record and the previous one, which excite us more than the old ones. But we will do it, there'll definitely be a mix, but I think it'll be much more focused on the new material.

Aidan and Malcolm, thank you so much for your time, and see you soon in Italy!

A & M: Thank you so much, bye!

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