30 years of tears: Looking back on the history of Arab Strap
Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton are digging out the party hats for an anniversary tour. Brian Donaldson recalls interviewing them right at the beginning and considers their place in the British music pantheon
‘I look like Chris Evans and Aidan looks a bit like Tony Slattery.’ It’s early September 1996 and with no email or WhatsApp at my disposal, I have a big clunky late 20th-century telephone in my fist in order to arrange a face-to-face interview with Malcolm Middleton (apparently a doppelganger of the redhead DJ and broadcaster) and his pal Aidan Moffat (seemingly a dead ringer for the Whose Line Is It Anyway? improv king).
Together they comprise a new indie duo from Falkirk called Arab Strap. Good things are being predicted (John Peel has been making positive noises about their debut song ‘The First Big Weekend’) but they are yet to have anything remotely close to a PR machine behind them. There are no publicity photos of the pair (more of that later) hence why Malcolm is giving me tips on their appearance. And while Peely may have been drifting off to sleep listening to lyrics such as: ‘Later that evening Malcolm introduced me to the power of Merrydown/£1.79 a litre, 8.2%… mmmmmm’, no one has been able to get a cassette (remember, it’s 1996) of their signature tune to me.
Someone somewhere has been able to send over a fax (again, 1996) of a handwritten sheet of A4 which is being passed off as a press release. One line suggests that ‘The First Big Weekend’ is Trainspotting put to music. When they greet me (slightly worse for the previous night’s imbibing) at Falkirk bus station, I sort-of understand what Malcolm was getting at. But no one would be stopping the lads in the street, mistaking them for those aforementioned ‘stars’. On that windy Saturday in ’96, a lack of press pictures mean they are reluctantly subjected to my less-than-skilled abilities with a cheapo polaroid camera. When Philophobia, their second album, comes out in 1998, one of my ‘pictures’ appears in a national newspaper, having been pilfered from The List’s image archive (a cabinet even clunkier than the office telephone I used to set up the initial interview). Word gets back that the pair are livid and are blaming me. As Daniel Day-Lewis put it five years earlier during In The Name Of The Father, ‘I’m an innocent man’, and on interviewing Malcolm in 1999 for album three, Elephant Shoe, we smooth things over.
Seven more years pass, and the band announce that they’re splitting up. There’s no drama, no spite, no recriminations. Their race has simply been run. Some fine solo projects and collaborations ensue across the following decade but when they announce that they’re getting the band back together, the glee from fans is palpable. When that eventual reunion album, As Days Get Dark, turns out to be a stone-cold classic, the joy is unbridled. Two albums further on, and the Strap are fully in the groove. Aidan’s lyrical concerns have, understandably, matured. Whereas pre-2006, the songs were largely about love (requited or otherwise), sex and partying, Strap 2.0 has been dominated by fretting over the ageing process, trying not to be hamstrung by the past, and surviving in the social-media era as both a perplexed individual and a concerned parent.
Have Arab Strap ever been given the full credit their discography deserves? They’ve been adored by credible parts of Scotland’s music press, are lauded by their indie peers, and generally receive positive reviews from the likes of Pitchfork. But overall, probably not. It took Mogwai 25 years to finally be honoured with a Mercury Prize nomination but Arab Strap have never had a sniff. Their music has appeared just once on Desert Island Discs when actor Adeel Akhtar picked ‘The First Big Weekend’ earlier this year. Lauren Laverne, the show’s host and Malcolm’s former squeeze, made little comment (and best not tell them that on their sandy retreats, Ian Rankin and Jimmy Carr both chose to take Belle And Sebastian’s ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’, a song which caused a rift between the two bands).
However history will look back upon Arab Strap when they call it a day for a second and probably final time, the lyrical honesty and humour, the melodic majesty and evocative soundscapes, and the overall integrity of their music will override everything. Would a bit more fame have changed them? Probably. Would it have been fun to see Aidan on something like Celebrity Traitors? Aye, course it would. But if it was a choice between that and being spoiled by songs such as ‘The Turning Of Our Bones’, ‘Molehills’, ‘Hello Daylight’, ‘I Would’ve Liked Me A Lot Last Night’ and ‘Don’t Ask Me To Dance’, it’s no contest.
Arab Strap play Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Sunday 11 October; Barrowlands, Glasgow, Saturday 17 October; Half-Told Tales is out now on Rock Action.