Arab Strap did one thing so very well that they spent the rest of their career proving that they could do others. It's not that Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton were interested in bringing various styles forward, but that they were stubbornly willing to push the sound of the Strap in some surprising directions prior to the band's dissolution in 2006. And, stubbornly refusing to stick to their various and considerable solo projects, the duo's now reconvened for their first new record in 16 years.
As Days Get Dark, out tomorrow on Rock Action, finds the music of Moffat and Middleton somehow richer, and, in a year of a plague-induced lockdown, oddly pertinent. Who knew that this kind of miserable material could seem so universal? The bitter and brutal "The Turning of our Bones" heralded the release of this record, with the Joy Division-recalling "Here Comes Comus!" following that one. Both were unsettling, and tough, in ways that felt new, even to long-time listeners. And while those are the beefier highlights here, the elegantly spare "Kebabylon" is a wryly heartfelt gem. Of a piece with earlier material from these two, and not entirely dissimilar to Pulp in their This is Hardcore guise, Moffat and Middleton wrap this one's melody up in string samples and angular keyboard washes, and a splash of sax. "Tears on Tour" is both achingly sad and funny, the rarest of combinations. Swinging between self-pity and self-deprecation, Moffat imagines a career as a reverse comedian, giving performances as a professional sob merchant. It's wildly funny on one level, and devastating on another. In another decade this one would have been covered by Leonard Cohen and Tindersticks, and maybe George Jones. Among so much here on As Days Get Dark that seems so good, this one seems a real career highlight, and perhaps one of the band's best ever tracks.
There's momentum here ("Just Enough") and loveliness ("Bluebird"), but As Days Get Dark pulses and throbs with a clean force. Rather than the bedsit DIY of the duo's earliest recordings, producer Paul Savage (The Delgados) understands exactly how to apply heft to this wildly intimate stuff, without losing the things that make this material precious in the best sense of that word. And while some of this did sort of sound more straightforward and Rock than I'd have expected, at the very heart of the whole enterprise are the two pieces that anchored every Arab Strap offering: Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton. Strip everything back to the most basic level and As Days Get Dark still sounds like Arab Strap. Allow the two musicians the moments here where they pursue new ideas, or a slightly more straightforward hook, because the majority of this record hits at those parts of a listener's pleasure-centers that the very first AS recordings did. There are new sounds here, new sonic shadings, but the bitterly sad and human music of Arab Strap remains ageless.
As Days Get Dark drops on Rock Action on Friday.
More details on Arab Strap via the official website.
[Photo: Paul Savage]