http://www.chemikal.co.uk/arabstrap.htm http://www.konkurrent.nl
Whenever some terminal dullard from a no-mark rock/ indie/ MoR band goes ‘singer/songwriter’ on us and releases the inevitably shite and ill-judged acoustic album the accompanying press release is exactly the same. The PR guffery will try to convince that the preponderance of acoustic guitars over their electrically amplified cousins is an indication of the artist writing more emotionally raw and ‘honest’ material. This is inevitably complete and utter bollocks.
Which brings us instead to Arab Strap. Aidan Moffat has his cock and balls out on the rear cover of Philophobia in a nude painting that mirrors the similarly naked portrait of his the girlfriend that adorns it’s cover. Some would see it as a distant echo of the famous John and Yoko full frontal on the Two Virgins album. That portrait (and indeed the music contained within the release) was celebratory, meant to signal rebirth, renewal and other new age words beginning with ‘r’. For Arab Strap, however, such an uncompromising approach was, and is, a signal of a genuinely stripped back, laid bare and straight to the fucking point honesty.
Over the course of the two albums that see their re-release here, Moffat and his co-conspirator Malcolm Middleton regale the listener with tales of drunkenness, drug taking and sexual sordidness that are good, bad but moreover really quite ugly. The tales of recidivism in matters alcoholic and sexual would come over as wearying braggadocio were it not for the degree of self-deprecation and the oft-times dry and merciless wit. Somehow a course between boastfulness and self-pity is navigated with a deceptively skilful touch. You wouldn’t suspect subtlety in a band who would open a song (indeed an album) with the line ‘It was the biggest cock you’d ever seen’ as Arab Strap do on Packs of Three. But Moffat mixes the profoundly delicate with the almost forensically graphic. So lines such as that about the cock jostle with others such as ‘You remember the way she swung her arms when she held your hand but you can’t remember how she kissed.’ For all the world-weariness, sarcasm, infidelity, hard-drinking and bloody-minded cuntishness there is something romantic inside the souls of Moffat and Middleton.
The band was oft considered an extremely downbeat pair (as they themselves rather sarcastically referenced in the title to their best of compilation Ten Years of Tears). Such a view is somewhat refuted by tracks like their debut single The First Big Weekend. A free-wheeling tale of a massive bender it ends with the (admittedly atypical but nevertheless revealingly joyous) coda ‘Went out for the weekend, it lasted forever/ got high with our friends it’s officially summer’.
Each album comes with a second disc which features a peel session and a live set. This bonus material emphasises how the tag of dour bastards really doesn’t fit (at least not entirely). Given that they were for the most part a two man operation and that one of those men was often wielding an acoustic guitar they were always refreshingly free from chin-stroking wankery. It wasn’t just because they harnessed electronica alongside the acoustic guitar to sometimes ear shattering effect, but moreover because they could be filthily ferociously fucking funny.