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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Arab Strap - Sinister Scottish Tunesmiths
Wednesday 07 May @ 10:19:35 |
 by Rob van Alstyne
Having recently had the chance to attend the Macalester / Groveland neighborhood’s annual Scottish Country Fair I was presented with a vision of Scotland as a land of caber tossing, sword-fighting and pseudo-River Dancing good times. Needless to say, it was an interesting introduction to the land, and differed greatly from my only other source for Scottish info—post-folk duo Arab Strap. Scotland as depicted through the lyrical eye of singer Aidan Moffat (a native of Falkirk) is a strikingly more modern and depraved entity, a land of covert sex and drunken longing with nary a kilt in sight. Deriving their name from an exotic sex toy Moffat spotted in a mail order catalogue and featuring abrasive couplets like, “tell me you want me in your cunt/tell me you know sure what you want,” it’s safe to say that Arab Strap occupy slightly less family-friendly Scot terrain than Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart. “
Since bursting onto the British indie-scene in the mid 90s with “The First Big Weekend” single on euro-hipster record label Chemikal Underground, Moffat and his bandmate, multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton, have tread a defiantly sleek and sinister musical path. Arab Strap’s basic formula has remained simple but effective: Moffat’s gently lilting spoken register singing voice paired with Middleton’s spy-movie styled backing tunes. Moffat lays bare all of the gruesome details of his relationships gone wrong in a chillingly detached Scot accent and startlingly direct narrative style. The title of the second track on the band’s latest album, Mondays at the Hug and Pint (Matador Records), adequately sums up Moffat’s lyrical world, “Meanwhile, at the Bar, a Drunkard Muses.”
Arab Strap, however, is far from a one-man show. It’s Middleton’s combination of mechanized drumbeats, stark piano figures and shadowy electric guitar textures that provide varied sonic inflection for Moffat’s universally downcast tunes. At moments treading a similar musical path to better known (and infinitely more obnoxious) contemporaries like Morcheeba, Arab Strap strike the balance between man and machine better than most, marrying shimmering electric piano solos to computer generated heart-beat rhythms with surprisingly cohesive results. The band wisely never opts for any of the flashy trappings (or faster song tempos) that might tag them with the dreaded ‘trip-hop’ label.
It’s easy to be skeptical of European groups who generate UK buzz at the beginnings of their careers, but Arab Strap, now in their eighth year together, have already doubled the life expectancy of any hype driven group. With their fifth proper studio album, they have settled into a groove that makes them seem ready for eight more. With both Moffat and Middleton dropping eclectic solo albums in 2002, it’s clear they returned to their primary project with new ideas in tow. The resulting Mondays at the Hug and Pint is easily Arab Strap’s most varied effort to date. Not every song plods along in a slowly deliberate manner, and the presence of straightforward folkier material, pretty violin flourishes, and live human drums should catch some longtime listeners off guard.
Don’t worry though—not everything has changed. Moffat’s lyric sheet still reads like a sexual masochist take on Virginia Woolf. When Moffat kicks off “Who Named the Days?” with the charming lines, “I never slam the door these days/But then again I’m never here,” you know that all is still wrong in the emotional realm of Glasgow’s sexiest purveyors of sinister spy-rock. Arab Strap arguably provides the ideal soundtrack for long nights, a heavy conscience and bad hangovers. Not a glorious job, but someone has to do it.
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