It starts with programmed drums like a stuttering heartbeart. A boozy
brogue whispers 'Only when you're wrecked/Do you agree with all my plans for
you and me,' wrapped around a guitar more articulate than the singer. A
cascading synth line punctuates like crystal falls. Welcome to the hazy,
hungover world of Arab Strap.
The career of Aidan Moffat (vocals) and Malcom Middleton (guitar) launched
itself in 1996 with the release of their first hit single, 'The First Big
Weekend.' Laid over a clubby beat, Moffat details the exploits of a weekend
of substance consumption, dancing, and generally gadding about. The song
was consumer-friendly enough to be picked up by Guiness for a UK ad
campaign, though Moffat's accent was considered unintelligible and another
singer was brought in to clear things up.
'Elephant Shoe,' the third studio full-length, continues the tradition of
booze-blurred confessional anecdotes set to a storm of electronic and
acoustic soundscapes, alternating programmed beats with live drums,
Middleton's crystalline guitar with cheap synth melodies. Moffat's
half-sung stories are straight from the bedroom, covering subjects in the
broken-relationship/incest/dream/sex/drugs range, occasionally dueting with
women who seem equally dissolute and equally broken. What saves Arab Strap
from frat-boy machismo is the intensity of emotion, a nonchalance and
tenderness born of experience and heartache. Listening to Arab Strap is
like watching a skillful but dead-drunk driver careening down the street:
beautiful in his speed and recklessness, with the added fascination of
potential disaster. The music swings like a bi-polar drunk from tender and
pleading to a big ol' Keith-Moon fuck-you cock-rocking wankiness. That's
what makes Arab Strap such a great rock 'n' roll band: the feeling that they
just can't help what they're doing. |