After ten years and a string of (in the main) consistently superb records, one of my favourite musical acts – Arab Strap – has announced that they are calling it a day. I use the term ‘musical acts’ because Arab Strap has never really been a band as such, more of a partnership between two highly charged individuals, Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat. In a nutshell you could say Middleton provides the music, melody and melancholy and Moffat the mumbling and the misanthropy. Arab Strap’s sound is largely a sort of self-pitying Glaswegian hangover brought to life - Middleton the depressive who recently wrote a song about spending Christmas day alone contemplating self-harm with a set of kitchen knives he’d been given as a gift (a true story, incidentally), and Moffat the mumbling fat guy with a beard, wrestling with his uncontrollable, over-emotional responses to love and relationships. Ergo, it won’t take much for anyone who knows me that well to fathom quite why I have adored them so much since I heard their debut single, The First Big Weekend, on John Peel’s radio show in the mid ‘90s (back in the days when I still listened to Peel during my pre-bedtime bath and Radio 3’s Late Junction was yet to be its replacement).
The Strap’s first album, The Weekend Never Starts Round Here, was an oddly persistent soundtrack to a month I spent in L.A. in 1997, and, somewhat incongruously, I would habitually fall asleep to its maudlin charm every night in a gorgeous designer hotel room at the Mondrian on Sunset Strip. After that I was totally and unremittingly hooked.
I’ll confess to feeling a bit upset when I read about the Strap’s decision to, essentially, end their platonic marriage. I’d wager there’s certainly a minimum of five songs from their recorded output that rank alongside some of the greatest work of many bands of the last 20 years. I’d say without reservation that one of those, New Birds, never fails to quite literally make the hairs on my arms prickle with emotion whenever I hear it, particularly the version on their live album Mad For Sadness which documents the best set I ever saw them play (at the QEH in London).
I’ve followed and supported the Strap like a sort of second division football team over all these years - appropriate really given the beery, vaguely underachieving, ‘men-are-a-mess-really’ nature of their endeavour. Except that, like such a supporter, I think they’re better than the critical mass would give them credit for. Moreover, I think in years to come their value will do nothing but rise. True, they’ve had their mistakes, and I have seen them play a couple of shows where either apathy or drunkenness have hampered their performance (not to mention the first time I saw them, at London’s Water Rats pub, when they not merely drank themselves into a stupor from the minute they appeared but later passed around a bottle of poppers on stage) but in the main I feel a great affection for what has been an unassuming, steady refining of their craft.
And what lyrics they have. To pull one genuinely at random (because it’s playing as I’m writing this) “If we’re having so much fun how come I’m crying every Monday? Is it just to cancel out the laughter from Thursday through till Sunday? I’ll spend the next two days in my bed and wonder what it’s all about.” And how good an opening line is "Sit by me silently and brush my beard.."? Not to mention song titles such as ‘I Would Have Liked Me A Lot Last Night’ and 'Meanwhile At The Bar A Drunkard Muses'.
I’m going to miss them, but like all my favourite bands (and by that I mean my truly favourite bands – the ones I forget about sometimes, then go back to or rediscover, or get fed up with and subsequently get obsessed with all over again) Arab Strap have a special place in my heart that will no doubt make their farewell shows in Glasgow in December a very emotional experience.