Send "Arab Strap " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 In a 2009 interview with Stereokill, Malcolm Middleton claimed that of all the albums he's recorded, his favorite is the first, Arab Strap's The Week Never Starts Round Here. "It's completely undiluted and free from any self-expectations which we later developed," was the reason he gave, and this makes sense when you're thinking about albums from the standpoint of a creator. Listening back is like finding yourself in a snapshot from when you were younger and the complications hadn't added up in your life yet. For a listener, of course, it's a bit different-- those same self-expectations that make Middleton uneasy when listening to his later work can nonetheless help a band create something greater, and I think age actually helped Arab Strap. Their final two albums, Monday At the Hug & Pint and Last Romance, are really fine records. The complications had piled up for sure, but the band's outlook changed as well, and their more nuanced way of looking at the world made for their best music.It's still interesting, though, to go back and revisit the band's debut and follow-up, especially with the bigger picture of their subsequent career in mind. Chemikal Underground's deluxe reissues bulk up the sound a little bit (but not too much) and each add a bonus disc with a Peel Session and a live performance that offer a more complete look at the band's early career than the albums alone would have. The Week Never Starts Round Here is in fact a pretty unpretentious, honest sounding record. Middleton, who did the instrumentals, and Aidan Moffat, who handled the vocals and lyrics, were a unique, fearless band right out of the gate, and Moffat's approach to sex and the exquisite misery of sleeping around and staying drunk immediately set them apart....full text |
| Chemikal |
| Choose nostalgia, choose girl-watching, choose unrequited lust, choose dope and lager, choose underwear fetishes, choose a four-track, choose Falkirk. Arab Strap are final proof, if need be, that the pre-millenium zeitgeist is adolescent, lo-budget and resolutely Scottish. Is it just my youth, growing up a few miles outside Glasgow, that Arab Strap have so well sussed, or is it all of yours as well? Late night treks to the Esso garage for some post-joint scran;elbow fights with old punks at the front of the barras gigs;beer bottle pile-ups in morning-after bedrooms;conquests and knockbacks;quickening pulses and post weekend come-downs...all life (pre-twenties, pre-coming to the city) is here, and all set to the delicious slo chime chords and snap-shut snare sounds of Albini-inspired lo-fi. "The Week..." is primarily about Arab Strap's girl-worshipping/girl-hating conundrums, set in a world where boys fetishise blonde hair and fantasise about idyllic sex with substitute mothers, but refer to happily oblivious ex-girlfriends as "pigs" and shy from turning perfect moments into long-term realities. It's full of sentiments you'll recognise, that'll make you laugh ("Phone me tonight when you are pissed") and the odd one you might not ("She looks best, Sunday morning, coming down") - no girl believes that shit, guys!). The language and colloquialisms are so spot-on that the occasional mis-choice sticks out a mile ("the sack" for bed in lowlands Scotland?)....full text |
| Thelineofbestfit |
| The time has come to make the case for Arab Strap’s formal adoption into the canon of bloody great bands. Although these ‘deluxe’ reissues of the Strap’s first two records add nothing to the band’s existing body of material, the original albums need little augmentation. Here are band who’s music not only had a truly unique sound –something approximating Slint meets Mogwai meets Radiohead meets Leonard Cohen- but also a unique character. These are not the chauvinistic songs of rock music, the self-effacing songs of folk, the posturing of punk or the melodrama of emo; these are something else, a wistful, darkly-humorous guided tour through the inner vaults of man’s modern psyche. Many songwriters are applauded for “telling it how it is”, for singing about life in all its sordid meaningless details, but Aidan Moffat, Arab Strap’s vocalist (for lack of a better work), took the everyday to extraordinary new depths. His songs, at their best, are narrative arcs and seductive monologues plotting a path of trivial details that make the broad-brush emotions of so many contemporary bands seem insincere. He is crass, he is nihilistic, and he would be irrevocably gloomy were it not for the humour which pervades his songs. Moffat is at once the bard and the jester. And boy does he have a knack for a good first line. Once you’ve heard the opening couplet on ‘Packs of Three’, the first song on Philophobia then there’s really no going back: “It was the biggest cock you’d ever seen, but you’ve no idea where that cock has been.” Deep in couplets such as this are all the fascinating contradictions in Moffatt’s storytelling. Here is a man engaged in seemingly endless accounts of casual sex, adultery, infidelity and smoldering passive aggressive mindfuck relationships, and yet the perspective adopted is not one of a boastful cassanova, but of a remorseful, weary idealist. He pines for the functional relationship which his failings, and his ‘birds’ shortcomings render fruitless and self-destructive....full text |
Arab Strap lyrics
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