Arab Strap - Honest, hateful love songs

“The most perfect pop song ever”, as Bbc Radio 1 dj Steve Lamacq once described the unconventional "The First Big Weekend", the very first single by Arab Strap. The story of the Scottish duo founded by singer-drummer Aidan Moffat and multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton begins in Falkirk in 1995, almost as a lark, born out of a shared love for a few artists on the Drag City roster, particularly Will Oldham (now known as Bonnie "Prince" Billy) and Smog, and out of endless cassette-tape swaps; at the time, Moffat was working at Sleeves Records, a well-known record shop in their hometown. They were taken under the wing of the then-fledgling independent label Chemikal Underground, set up by Delgados, John Peel's favourites, the only outfit to respond promptly after receiving their demo tape.
In their early days, the duo's dark pop travels on electroacoustic tracks between post-folk, indie-rock and post-rock heading toward Slint, running alongside the slowcore current led by Low, paired with blunt, detailed lyrics bordering on brutality and sung in broad Scots, the project's trademark, though these have become, in Moffat's own view, somewhat more "opaque" and less direct over time.

Went out for the weekend, it lasted for ever…

Produced by Paul Savage, their debut The Week Never Starts Round Here arrives in 1996, marking the start of a long partnership that would see the duo work with the Delgados' drummer on many other occasions (both for band material and various side projects). The aforementioned "The First Big Weekend" can be seen as a manifesto for understanding the path the band would take: the track unfolds over nearly five minutes of Moffat's spoken-word monologue (save for the sung closing refrain) over an insistent bed of drum machine and flourishes of acoustic guitar courtesy of Middleton, bluntly and unfiltered describing the events of a weekend (the one of the England-Scotland match at Euro '96) spent between Glasgow and Falkirk, with trips to pubs and clubs, the resulting hangovers, and rather clumsy attempts to chat up girls. Slower and more stripped-back is "Coming Down", the opener that makes clear what the duo mean by "honest, hate-filled love songs" right from the sentiments expressed in its opening lines “Make me reflective, make me introspective/ Make me the violence, and explain my silence/ ‘Cause it’s never too late to fill me with hate…”, as does "Driving", the mongrel "Wasting" and "Kate Moss", and the heavy tread of the bassline on "Gourmet". Also standing out are the noisier, darker electronics of "The Clearing", the brief, harmonious lo-fi melody of "I Work In A Saloon", the mischievous folk airs of "Little Girls" and the screeching strings of "Phone Me Tonight".

With zero expectations for the success of The Week Never Starts Round Here, extremely raw and recorded in a grim studio in an industrial part of Hamilton, the duo set off on their first tour alongside bassist Gary Miller and drummer David Gow, with whom they also worked on the gorgeous slowcore-to-chamber-pop crescendo of "Soaps", one of the key tracks on the following effort, Philophobia, one of the finest albums in the Arab Strap catalogue.
Released in 1998, the sophomore record features several guests, such as Adele Bethel, co-writer and vocalist on the blunt dialogue of the sensual, shadowy "Afterwards", and no fewer than three members of Belle & Sebastian — Chris Geddes (Hammond organ and electric piano), Stuart Murdoch (piano) and Sarah Martin (violin) — who would release their third album, "The Boy With The Arab Strap", that same year, taking its title directly from the name of the Falkirk project they'd just worked with, a choice that visibly irritated Moffat and Middleton. For production, Paul Savage this time teamed up with Geoff Allan; the setting of the stories is, of course, still post-Thatcher Britain, but the recording quality is markedly superior and the duo's ideas are sharply focused and more vividly realised than ever.
“It was the biggest cock you’d ever seen/ But you’ve no idea where that cock has been/ You said you were careful – you never were with me/ I heard you did it four times but jonnies come in packs of three”, goes the eloquent opening line of "Packs Of Three", which greets the listener by tackling head-on the uncomfortable subject of sexually transmitted diseases, sliding over clean, minimal sounds dominated by a Wurlitzer piano and finger-snaps. The album's title refers to the fear of loving and giving oneself fully to another without reservation, a theme traced through the lack of trust expressed in the tormented "Here We Go", whose delicate textures are jolted by a bolt of electronics right at the halfway point of the track.
Rising above everything is the tension conveyed by the nostalgic "New Birds", which, besides unfolding in the usual spoken-word fashion, veers slightly toward moods reminiscent of Midwestern emo, enriched by a powerful, building final coda and some of the most emotionally honest lyrics around, capable of tearing the human soul to pieces. Next come the repetitive organ notes and electro textures of "One Day, After School", the subtle cynicism scrutinising the lovers at the heart of the atmospheric, dreamlike "Islands", poised between hope and isolation, the jazz-and-trip-hop touches underpinned by the smooth, melancholy trumpet solo of "The Night Before The Funeral", the reflective folk-pop of "Not Quite A Yes" and the bare piano and drum machine of "Piglet".
The long fade-out close is left to the stripped-back "My Favourite Muse", the rediscovered (dark-)jazz airs with a nod to the Bristol sound on "I Would've Liked Me A Lot Last Night", and the piano chimes of "The First Time You're Unfaithful".
Philophobia is flawless from its first to its last (un)happy note (the perspective is always twofold, that of an outside observer and that of a fully immersed protagonist), with no frills and no roundabout wordplay: just genuine, disillusioned, slightly grubby love songs.

Did we go far enough?

Sadcore in its purest form: Elephant Shoe (1999) is without doubt, along with its successor The Red Thread, one of the duo's saddest and most complex records, and also the only studio album to be released on a major, Go! Beat, on the urging of the Delgados themselves, who encouraged Moffat and Middleton not to pass up the opportunity. The fear of showing affection is once again the prevailing leitmotif: the album's title is in fact an expression used by children to disguise the dreaded phrase "I love you". What stands out most are the IDM-tinged pulses and the luminous, dreamy flashes of "Cherubs", the placid guitar passages of "One Four Seven One", the dark piano notes veering toward neofolk on "Pyjamas", and the terse, stylised "Pro-(Your) Life", which tackles the subject of abortion and personal priorities.
Among the slow passages marked by strings in the second half of "Autumnal" and the unsettling dark-folk atmospheres of "Aries The Ram" come the incisive "Direction Of Strong Man", the neo-psych coda of "Tanned" and the closing "Hello Daylight", the only track to find any sunlight, at least sonically. "I was too worried about what others would think and I don't think I achieved what I'd hoped," Moffat would later admit about Elephant Shoe; nevertheless, the album did good business across Europe, allowing the duo to reach new audiences thanks to the visibility the label afforded them.

The Red Thread (2001) marks a return to the Chemikal Underground fold, with no regrets whatsoever for having tried a different path previously. The red thread of the title serves as emotional comfort, since according to an Eastern belief one is connected to one's life partner by just such a thread, but here it's also firmly tied to the psychological distress Moffat was going through while making the record, grappling with the end of a significant relationship. The highest peaks are reached by the downtempo atmospheres of the pivotal "Love Detective", in which the protagonist finds a diary full of scalding revelations while rummaging through the secrets "hidden in plain sight" of his current girlfriend, as well as by the eighties-tinged rhythms and shadows of the lengthy closer "Turbulence".
Dominating this troubled (to put it mildly) landscape is the haunted dark-pop of the whirling "Last Orders" and "Scenery"; alongside them come the purely folk influences of the opener "Amor Veneris" and of the excellent "Screaming In The Trees", with its long silences, plus the one-of-a-kind "Haunt Me", orchestral and oblique, and the noisier "The Long Sea", which incorporates gothic and drone elements.

In 2002, Middleton and Moffat launched their respective solo careers: the former with the fine singer-songwriter record 5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine, which boasts a sizeable roster of collaborators including the entire Delgados lineup; the latter under the pseudonym Lucky Pierre, releasing Hypnogogia, an entirely instrumental work between ambient and downtempo. Old habits die hard, and the moniker Aidan chose stays firmly within the realm of sexual innuendo: while Arab Strap refers to a sex toy, this new name denotes the man in the middle of a gay threesome.

The following year came the ambitious Monday At The Hug & Pint (2003), in which the duo throws open the doors of a pub (fictional at the time, now actually in existence, where apparently Aidan gets free drinks) and guides us through a range of stories in a sort of vaguely schizophrenic circle of hell, backed by a mini-orchestra made up of Jenny Reeve of Eva, cellist Stacey Sievwright, a new string section, and a few special guests such as Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes and Barry Burns (Mogwai). Thanks to the fresh energy drawn from their side projects and the return of Geoff Allan to the producer's chair, the duo slightly broaden their sonic horizons: witness the danceable electropop rhythms and strings of "The Shy Retirer", the dizzying Low-esque walls of sound on the ferocious "Fucking Little Bastards", and the degenerate waltz of "Peep Peep".
"Meanwhile, At The Bar, A Drunkard Muses" takes a step back toward their earlier sadcore output, while a brief instrumental interlude (built from a sample of the instrument-symbol of the Scottish spirit, the bagpipes) carries us from the poignant "Who Named The Days?" into "Loch Leven", a folk ballad with as blunt a set of lyrics as ever, pure Moffat: "Fuck me he says/ fuck you she says". "The Week Never Starts Round Here" links back to the band's debut, while "Flirt" loses itself in a mannered, circling folk-pop and "Glue" opts for dreamy atmospheres. The record's final stretch leans further into melancholy with the orchestral, sarcastic "Act Of War", "Serenade" and the lullaby "Pica Luna".
Monday At The Hug & Pint is certainly not the Scottish group's finest chapter, but it marks a crucial step in their path toward new sonic experimentation; over time it has also earned praise from several admirers, including James Graham (Twilight Sad), as well as from specialist critics.

The duo returned to their solo projects at the start of 2005, followed by Touchpool, L. Pierre aka Moffat's second downtempo record, and the solid Into The Woods, on which Middleton once again rallies some notable names, chief among them (besides his own bandmate) Stuart Braithwaite and Barry Burns. That same October saw the release of their sixth effort, The Last Romance, co-produced by the band together with the Allan-Savage pairing. More optimistic in tone, though still tackling the dark side of relationships as ever, and running just over half an hour — as direct in intent as a slap in the face — the well-balanced record opens up to alt-rock influences with a great deal of dynamic range, and the few acoustic tracks draw inspiration from fellow countrymen Mogwai. The most obvious callback to the past, reshaped for this record, is the jarring experimental folk of "Chat In Amsterdam, Winter 2003", while in the opener "Stink", in the drive of "Don't Ask Me To Dance" and in the calmer "Dream Sequence", pathos, melody, rough guitar riffs and electronics are skilfully woven together. "(If There's) No Hope For Us", built around tight drum rhythms, and the harmonious "Speed-Date" move at a faster clip.
The curtain falls on a hope (tinged with melancholy) for a new beginning, buoyed by the festive atmospheres of horns and strings on "There Is No Ending".

Not everything must end
Not every romance must descend
Not every lover's pact decays
Not every sad mistake replays

Thank you for listening and goodbye

An unexpected cold shower arrived on 9 September 2006, when the duo announced via their website that they were splitting up, stating that they had run their course and that The Last Romance represented a fitting happy ending to the journey they had taken thus far, without ruling out possible future collaborations in other areas. Moffat and Middleton marked the tenth anniversary of The Week Never Starts Round Here with the release of the compilation Ten Years Of Tears, not just the usual celebratory album but a coherent, fully realised survey of the Arab Strap career, including many memorable songs alongside some decidedly minor ones, aimed mainly at fans. At the end of that same year they embarked on their farewell tour, playing their final show on 17 December 2006 at the Shibuya O-Nest, following a series of secret gigs in Japan.

However, the duo's activities didn't stop there. Aidan continued his output under the L. Pierre moniker with Dip in 2007, also releasing a record under his own name that same year, I Can Hear Your Heart, and founding the project Aidan Moffat & The Best-Ofs, a quartet that made its live debut on 20 August 2007 supporting Slint at Glasgow's ABC, while the studio debut How To Get To Heaven From Scotland came out in 2009. Worth remembering too is Everything's Getting Older, an album born out of a (first) collaboration with Bill Wells and released in 2011, the year in which a window reopened on Arab Strap's live fortunes: the duo reunited to take part in a show celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Nice N Sleazy, a well-known Glasgow venue, on 17 November. In parallel, up until that event, Malcolm also kept up his solo career under his own name, notching up three interesting releases in a row: A Brighter Beat (2007), Sleight Of Heart (2008) and Waxing Gibbous (2009).

Despite a few interviews given between 2012 and 2013, in which Middleton said he was open to future Arab Strap shows but had serious doubts about releasing new material (with the monumental 2010 box-set Scenes Of A Sexual Nature acting as a presumed requiem), everything carried on as usual: Middleton in particular coined a new moniker, Human Don't Be Angry, followed by the self-titled debut in 2012 and the sophomore effort Electric Blue in 2015, with Music And Words (2014), a four-handed work with David Shrigley, slotted in between; meanwhile Moffat delivered a first double bill in 2013 under the L. Pierre project, The Island Come True and The Eternalist, and a second in 2015 under his own name, comprising Vagrants_09_14 and another collaboration with Bill Wells, The Most Important Place In The World.

In 2016 Aidan recorded Where You're Meant To Be, a collection featuring his own personal reinterpretations of traditional Scottish songs, as well as the soundtrack to the equally titled and amusing documentary directed by Paul Fegan, in which he stars alongside singer-songwriter Sheila Stewart, while Malcolm cut off his folk roots, ditching guitars and natural rhythms for sequencers and drum machines on the indie-pop of Summer Of '13.
Around that same time, a brand-new website finally appeared, with Arab Strap confirming their return to the stage with a series of shows celebrating their twentieth anniversary as a band, the announcement accompanied by the release of a new version of their very first single, remixed by fellow Scot Miaoux Miaoux, "The First Big Weekend Of 2016". The list of dates grew to include sold-out shows and festival appearances, running through to 2017.
The following year the band was back in limbo, with the release of Here Lies The Body and Ghost Stories For Christmas, on which Moffat found a new playmate in RM Hubbert (El Hombre Trajeado), and of Bananas, with which Middleton did an about-face, returning to simpler, gentler sounds than those explored on his previous solo chapter.

Raise our carcass to the sky, wrap us up in sequin skin and we can dance again in sin

Following the release of Guitar Variations (2019), the third album under the Human Don't Be Angry name, Malcolm's website let fans know he was working with Moffat on new material due out in 2020; meanwhile Moffat came up with yet another alias (there's no keeping count by now), Nyx Nótt, to release Aux pieds de la nuit, in dark-jazz and post-electro territory. On the first of September that year, as promised, the duo finally released the single "The Turning Of Our Bones", the first new Arab Strap track in fifteen years since The Last Romance, before pencilling in their official return with their seventh album As Days Get Dark, set for March 2021 via Rock Action, the label founded by Mogwai.
Sex and death, Moffat and Middleton's favourite themes, are once again front and centre, made plain from the very videos for singles "Here Comes Comus!" and "The Turning Of Our Bones", and from the album's cover art. The latter depicts a computer desktop with two overlapping windows displaying images: the 1886 painting "The Night Escorted By The Geniuses Of Love And Study" by Pedro Américo sits in the foreground, obscuring what is presumably a pornographic photo.
The album embodies a slippery balance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, between synthetic sound and intimacy, calling us back down to earth from the afterlife. Likewise, Moffat's vocal delivery swings between emotional detachment and a dizzying fall into carnal passion. The restless, sweat-soaked "The Turning Of Our Bones" opens the record, ferrying our helpless bodies into "Another Clockwork Day", a track emblematic of the band's refined songwriting, in which Moffat moves effortlessly between vibrant spoken-word poetry and a quiet sung refrain. The accordion's entrance in dialogue with the horns is gorgeous, as soft as a Tindersticks arrangement, while Aidan flicks through photographs of his protagonist, much like Phil Elverum does in "Microphones in 2020".
As Days Get Dark winds between disco grooves and ballads, between the magnetic, obsessive chorus of "Bluebird" (“I don’t want your love, I need your love/ give me your love, don’t love me/ I don’t want your love, I need your love/ don’t love me”) and the stark, fateful stride of "Tears On Tour". Wave echoes run through "Kebabylon" and "Fable Of The Urban Fox", with strings straight out of the Cure's "Disintegration" and shards of free-jazz brass, as does "Here Comes Comus!", caught between dark languor and Eighties pop lasciviousness (“What has the night to do with sleep?/ There is no secret she won’t keep/ it’s only sinful in the sunlight anyway”). Towards the end, the gorgeous "Sleeper" gives way to "Just Enough", two songs that embody the relationship between past and present in this contemporary version of Arab Strap's music:

Now this is my last chance to turn and go home
only seconds left before the doors close
I stand in the doorway, my bag left behind
I search for light; a whistle blows

So many small, precious details to take in up close without losing sight of the bigger picture. Eleven lean, intriguing, tightly-built tracks, on an album with not a single dip in quality. An extraordinary comeback that confirms the importance of quality over quantity, and how choosing to release a record only when you actually have something to say pays off handsomely: although the duo have had plenty of fun experimenting separately (and continue to do so) under a host of different monikers, they chose to leave the original project untouched until inspiration came knocking again, on its own terms and in its own time.

2022 saw the release of the single "Aphelion/Flutter", whose tracks date back to the As Days Get Dark recording sessions, and gave birth to the Gentle Sinners project, curated by Moffat and James Graham, frontman of Twilight Sad. On the debut These Actions Cannot Be Undone, it's still Graham singing in his thick Scottish accent and with the folk colours of his homeland, but Aidan supplies richly layered backing tracks full of feverish industrial beats, melodramatic strings and jazz shades (which he'd already brushed up against on the records with Bill Wells), in a claustrophobic whirlwind whose sole epicentre is the postmodern anxiety expressed in the lyrics.

The end of 2023 was entirely devoted to the twenty-fifth anniversary of Philophobia, celebrated with a series of acoustic shows, after which, in January of the following year, the celebrated Moffat-Middleton outfit announced their eighth album, I'm Totally Fine With It Don't Give A Fuck Anymore. Nearly thirty years into their career, Arab Strap show no sign of stopping experimenting and surprising their audience: if the eagerly awaited, full-scale return with the electro post-rock chapter As Days Get Dark was instantly hailed as one of the best albums the Scottish duo ever made, their eighth effort keeps the quality bar high, placing the emphasis on indietronic elements. Written and played solely by Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton, and polished off together with long-time collaborator Paul Savage, the record moves between synth-pop/rock, dance flourishes, darkwave passages, industrial and much more, and seems focused on a constant tug-of-war between the real and virtual worlds, steeped in an oxymoronic "quiet rage".
The stride of "Allatonceness" brushes up against metal memories, which combined with industrial and post-hardcore elements create a pugnacious, forceful opener, built on a sense of mounting unease with every turn of the drums and menacing guitar, capped by a surprising finale, typical of Moffat's spoken lyrics, which here effectively describe how one can become numbed by the madness playing out online. The track's title is taken from the book "The Medium Is The Massage: An Inventory Of Effects" (1967), written by sociologist and mass-communications scholar Marshall McLuhan. It gives way to the synthetic, darkwave-inflected pop of "Bliss", the album's peak, split between obsessive rhythm and melody, revolving around the theme of online harassment of women and the cowardice of those who hide behind a screen.

Cowards under camouflage
Lobbing hate-bombs, hurling jeers
Faceless brutes and bigots
Revealing all their boyhood fears
Hostility, fragility
Rejected, vengeful tattletales
We built another world
But history and hate prevail

The sampled drum bursts with a vaguely baggy feel on "Sociometer Blues" spill into a driving synth-rock finale, while the reflective "Hide Your Fires" lowers the tone slightly, with piano notes in the background and electronics to the fore, bringing to mind certain Depeche Mode productions. The gorgeous, melancholy "Summer Season" follows a similar path, adding strings and noise passages, its central theme being the lack of "real" connection between people.
The band's slowcore origins haven't been forgotten either, as shown by a track like "Molehills", which opens in electroacoustic fashion (with trip-hop touches) and is built around a few guitar flourishes and drum samples, joined by spectral string shadows in the second half as it gears up towards a coda of hammering loops.
The journey continues with the synth-pop-dance atmosphere of "Strawberry Moon", a deeply personal track about a difficult moment in Aidan's life, driven by afrobeat-leaning rhythms and anchored to a bassline wrapped in a crackling cloud of fuzz; the alt-pop of "You're Not There", the album's only weak spot, and the placid piano stride of "Haven't You Heard". The record turns back to the past with the chamber-folk notes of the sparse, emotional "Safe & Well", based on the moving story of a woman who died in complete solitude and lay undiscovered for a long time during the pandemic, before picking back up with the choruses of "Dreg Queen" and the epic closer "Turn Off The Light", built on walls of shoegaze- and post-rock-derived sound.

An expression of total freedom from its very title, I'm totally fine with it don't give a fuck anymore marks another worthy chapter, the most danceable and catchy one yet, in Arab Strap's endless evolution: amid newly reached sonic territory and urgent, timely themes, the desire to hear the celebrated (and utterly un-pigeonholeable) Moffat-Middling outfit live in this renewed guise, letting loose that dose of quiet rage secretly lurking within all of us and allowing us to (truly) reconnect with others, has never been stronger.

That Arab Strap were back to stay was clear from As Days Get Dark onwards, a comeback too beautiful, too intense to be a mere flash in the pan. What they couldn't have known is that after an initial career phase (running from their debut to 2005's The Last Romance) marked almost by shyness, by bedroom indie-pop sketches, in this second life Aidan Moffat's thick-Scottish-accented stories would find ever more concrete and harsh settings.
The new Half-Told Stories (2026) are told to us in a riot of big guitars ("Dollar Park", to name one), drum machines in full flight and emphatic crescendos ("Basic Physics") that mark the definitive solidifying of the "Falkirk" duo's sound – who would ever have expected an electro battle cry like "Fighting For You" from Strap? Moffat still can't stand the noise coming from the world around him, and makes that abundantly clear right from the opener "I Get Noise". But on this third post-reunion album, outward events matter less than on "As Days Get Dark" and "I'm Totally Fine With It/Don't Give A Fuck Anymore", respectively the album of coming to terms with things and the album of accepting a modernity in ruins.
These fourteen new songs, not all of them strictly essential, speak of middle age, bodily decay, and the fear of who will be left once we're gone.
After an alternative-dance lashing with a guitar-heavy finale in "You You You", in which Moffat complains of an itchy scrotum, a bloated belly and pills he mustn't forget to take, comes "Glamour Magick", an attack on the ever more premature resort to cosmetic surgery, driven by a rough, circling guitar riff and acidic electronics. The album's most delicate moment, a kind of velvety indietronica garnished with sax titled "Be A Man", is also its darkest, with Moffat whispering his worries about raising a son in an age of a recalcitrant patriarchy and the manosphere; while "Ampersand" revives the band's old fondness for acoustic arpeggios and folk inflections.
One could argue to Aidan and Malcolm that 55 minutes of music is a lot, and that a meta-song like "Beats Per Minute" is a rather self-indulgent episode, but is it really worth quibbling in the face of such an urgent, sardonic record, one still capable of showing us that (perhaps) not all is lost?

Contributions by Claudio Fabretti ("Monday At The Hug & Pint"), Maria Teresa Soldani ("As Days Get Dark") and Michele Corrado ("These Actions Cannot Be Undone", "Half-Told Tales")

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