Arab Strap
“We weren’t trying too hard…”: Malcolm Middleton (left) and Aidan Moffat in 1996
The Scottish love detectives investigate 25 years of tears. “They’re not accusatory songs…”
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HE first sound you hear on Arab Strap’s second album is a dolorous Scottish voice delivering a solemn message. “It was,” the voice says, “the biggest cock you’d ever seen…” For an impressive 10 years (Ten Years Of Tears as their best-of had it), this kind of unvarnished delivery of candid material was the sole stamping ground of Malcolm Middleton (guitar) and Aidan Moffat (vocals, drums). Sonically the product of the pair’s twin interests in lo-fi music and in getting wrecked in clubs at the weekend, Arab Strap’s unique talent was raw verisimilitude. Rows (“Don’t try to tell me Kate Moss ain’t pretty…”), betrayals, and emotional unease were all picked over in their songs, with a forensic eye for detail. Their first classic recording was “The First Big Weekend”, a portrait of Thursday-to-Monday hedonism in which similarity to actual events was entirely intentional. After 15 years away, Arab Strap now return with a new and excellent, album titled As Days Get Dark, prompting Middleton and Moffat to join Uncut via Zoom and pick over the scenes of their many sensitive crimes. “I think some people still think that Arab Strap is about me moaning about girlfriends and how I’ve been treated,” says Aidan, “but in all of these songs it’s all about me being the arsehole. They’re not accusatory songs. They might detail some stuff, but it’s me that’s the problem.”
JOHN ROBINSON
THE WEEK NEVER STARTS ROUND HERE CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND, 1996
The uncompromising debut. Slinty post-rock collides with Dictaphone confessionals and Falkirk mockumentary. Contains real names, but no-one wins the big cash prize. AIDAN MOFFAT [vocals, drums, beats]: We’d been in each other’s orbit for a while. Malcolm had been in a band called Rabid Lettuce. The first time I sang with you was when you did that gig at The Argyle in Falkirk. I was lying under the table after a few pints and found a microphone, so I joined in. MALCOLM MIDDLETON [guitar]: That was probably “Rip Your Face Off With A Fridge”. Our classic hit. Around 1995 we started spending more time together. We borrowed Stuart The Postman’s four-track – we went to his house and recorded some songs. We weren’t trying too hard, it was laidback and it sounded different. AM: I think Malcolm came up with the title. At the time we were both on the dole, so we didn’t do anything apart from wait for the weekend. “The First Big Weekend” is a bit of an anomaly because it’s the only song that was written with joy in 94 • UNCUT • MARCH 2021
mind. Everything else was the morning after in the gloom – that was when I, at any rate, felt most productive. I was very principled back then. Everything had to be true; I had to be honest no matter how difficult it was to hear. I’m quite proud of it. I stuck to my guns for most of it. Obviously some of it is faintly embarrassing, but as you can probably tell embarrassment is not something I felt much of then.
PHILOPHOBIA CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND, 1998
Arab Strap’s second, and their most fully realised excursion around the emotional landscape of their mid-twenties. “I’m that pissed I can’t remember what I said…” MOFFAT: The first record there was no plan. We had no idea of how we wanted it to sound and the stuff that worked, worked – well enough. We’d had more time to think about it by the time we got to Philophobia. The first record didn’t have an audience, but once you know you have an audience… I think I felt a responsibility to make a record that wasn’t recorded on Dictaphones. I think it helped us focus and it became something more real. It actually looked like it could be a job for 10 minutes. It’s funny listening back to that because there’s bits on it that I don’t remember at all. We had
MOFFAT: A lot of the songs are second or third take – and we were writing in the studio. In the ’90s people still bought records, so there was still money to do that – you could afford to go to a studio and dick about for three hours ’til you got a song. Then I would come back a couple of months later with some lyrics for it. A lot of it was written in the studio, so a lot of what you’re hearing is a song that’s still completely new to us. a jazz trumpeter come in for UNCUT half a day, had people come CLASSIC MIDDLETON: It’s still a lo-fi record. It’s shinier and more in and do the cello. It’s full polished but not slick. We of wee surprises I don’t were quite confident for two remember. It was a big jump guys who knew nothing. Paul from the first one. There was a lot of experimentation – we’d never met Savage and Geoff Allan are amazing the trumpeter or the cellist, they were engineers and producers, and friends of friends. It all started to gel. because we were confident they thought we knew what we were MIDDLETON: The first one we had doing so they would, like, listen to written and maybe five days to us. Years later it’d be like, “Why the record it. For this one we had maybe fuck did you listen to us?” “Soaps” and one or two other songs MOFFAT: Everything was true. written and we went in two days Falkirk’s not a very big place, so it’s here and there over the course of a easy to become entangled. Like in year – it was in the background of Ghostbusters, the streams crossed doing the gigs that we started fairly often. I didn’t use real names recording. That’s probably why very much: “The First Big Weekend” it’s a long record and it sounds [with its mentions of “Gina”, different between songs because “Matthew” and “Malcolm”] is a bit of it’s two different studios as well.
