Arab Strap – As Days Get Dark
Rock Action – 5 March 2021
You know how Arab Strap have always presented themselves as the musical equivalent of that distinctively dirty dopamine hit you get from a spell of what used to be called self-abuse? Well, on their new album Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton have gone a step further and written a song about that very act. Another Clockwork Day, the second song on As Days Get Dark, is a simple tale of a lonely man and his laptop. But where in the past the duo might have described a scene of almost showy griminess, here the turn of events is nostalgic, almost sweet. The protagonist, numbed by over-exposure to porn, finds the only way of getting his kicks is to masturbate in secret while his wife sleeps upstairs. The twist is that all those images on his laptop are old snaps of her. It’s sad and strangely poignant.
If you hadn’t already heard the opening track The Turning Of Our Bones you might be forgiven for thinking that the boys were going soft. But when Moffat begins the album with the words ‘I don’t give a fuck about the past/or glory days gone by’ you know you’re in for a ride that is as characteristically visceral and self-deprecatingly ironic as ever. Where lesser – and more inhibited – bands often use music as a metaphor for sex, Arab Strap turn that idea on its head. The duo’s long hiatus and subsequent reformation is described in terms of an on-off relationship, and this being Arab Strap, it’s a slightly grubby – and therefore very real – relationship. Warts and all, almost literally. The sexual act – and by extension, the act of making music – is simultaneously elevated to ritual and reduced to the banality of school runs and trysts in Tesco. Body horror in the Body Shop. Musically, The Turning Of Our Bones marches along to a programmed drum beat and handclaps, while a darkly skittish guitar haunts the song’s heels like a black dog.
The seven-year itch described in The Turning Of Our Bones is actually an understatement. As Days Get Dark is actually the first Arab Strap album since 2005’s The Last Romance. For a band to retain both their signature sound and the sheer quality of their previous recordings over such a long period is always impressive, but to do so without actually playing together as a band is a rare feat, one that requires a kind of lasting telepathy rather than endurance. Of course, there have been solo projects and guest slots (including on each other’s albums), but an Arab Strap record is something else. To say their sound is distinctive doesn’t really do them justice. More so than practically any other band in Britain their music is instantly recognisable: an Arab Strap song couldn’t really be anything else.
Perhaps as a result, they have never really been pigeonholed in a particular genre. Sure, they’re indie, but that doesn’t really mean anything any more, if indeed it ever did. While they emerged from a similar time and place as Belle and Sebastian (and shared similarly literary aspirations), the two bands were and are worlds apart, musically, while Moffat’s gruff delivery and penchant for Glasgow’s grim underbelly seemed to be the polar opposite of Stuart Murdoch’s wry but ultimately wholesome tales. Dance music and post-rock are clearer influences than the Smiths or the Shop Assistants, a fact that positions them closer to their buddies and former label-mates Mogwai than to the slew of jangly guitar bands that emerged from Glasgow in the 1990s. Middleton’s guitar on Compersion Pt. 1 is as tightly-wound as anything by David Pajo or David Grubbs, and the programmed drums bristle with an energy that is restrained but almost industrial. Bluebird is the closest thing to an exception to this rule: the melody is positively pastoral, the guitar folky. But in the depths of the song is a typically Moffatesque image: an online lurker depicted as a shitehawk hiding in the bushes and hawking his shite.
One notable difference between this and previous albums is the duo’s willingness to engage with themes of specific marginalisation, rather than focusing on the more generalised decay of society and individuals. Kebabylon (with its wonderful free-jazz horn section) inhabits the persona of an invisible street cleaner knee-deep in used johnnies and discarded drug paraphernalia, while Tears On Tour is a heartbreaking examination of Moffat’s own grief and also a timely middle finger to the notion of traditional men-don’t-cry masculinity. Here Comes Comus! tackles toxic relationships and horrible hipsterism with a surprising but undeniably catchy melodic flow.
Perhaps most surprising of all though is Fable Of The Urban Fox, which begins as an adult Animals Of Farthing Wood but soon crystallises into a scathing portrait of a racially divided post-Brexit Britain. Here and elsewhere on the album there are shades of Richard Dawson’s state-of-the-nation epic, 2020, but Moffat’s lyrical vision is altogether darker than Dawson’s. The brooding sprawl of Sleeper is an uncharacteristic leap away from realism into metaphysical speculation and existential dread, a beery train journey that doubles as a final reckoning of a life lived badly, while the stop-start slowcore of closer Just Enough is a bleak examination of self-doubt and self-harm tempered by barely perceptible slivers of hope.
‘What would you call the opposite of a comedian?/Whatever it is, that’s what I wanted to be,’ Moffat sings on Tears On Tour. He has always played the role of arch-miserablist admirably. Arab Strap’s songs document the world at its lowest ebb; they give the impression that they do so without compassion, that degradation and squalor are legitimate subjects in their own right. And perhaps they are. But somewhere at the heart of these new songs is the realisation that the world has caught up with their pessimistic vision of it. There is a new confidence on show here. It feels like the time is finally right for Arab Strap.
Photo Credit: Kat Gollack