www.arabstrap.co.uk
Melody Maker - 14th December, 1996
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 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 aqnd colloquialisms are so spot-on that the occasional mis-choice stick out a mile ("the sack" for bed in lowlands Scotland?). There's even a great example of late night under(bed)cover whisperings into a tape recorder which includes the utterly convincing line "I hope I dinnae wake my mother up." The intimacy which results is genuinely goose-pimpling.
This isn't the place where Jarvis Cocker meets Irvine Welsh (despite "Thoughts of your sister helped us wank"). It goes deeper and wider than that. This is your life.
JADE GORDON
Select
Thanks to one label, Scotland is rapidly becoming as associated with lo-fi as Seattle with grunge and Stourbridge with crap. Arab Strap are the latest teenage sensation, making a sound so anorexic that Bis sound like Queen in comparison. Runrig they aren't.
Their debut 45 'The First Big Weekend' is the main attraction here, a mundane house beat overlaid with a jaded monologue about weekender culture which conjures up bizarre images of Renton fronting the Folk Implosion. "The same story... Lots of hugging, lots of dancing, etcetera etcetera."
But the album is more Gregory's Girl than Trainspotting, a doleful collection of songs about fumbled sexual experiences composed by core due Aidan and Malcolm, a slightly more Satanic version of The Proclaimers. It's a weirdly addictive brew, with an underlying melancholy that chills you to the bone.
The creepy 'Deeper' sounds like Serge Gainsbourg after one bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape too many, while two untitled tracks take the DIY ethos to its logical conclusion, featuring one of the Straps murmuring quietly into a crackly microphone because he is afraid of waking up his mum. Of course they'll never be big, but the same was said about Babybird...
JOHN MULLEN
Freakscene
Arab Strap are another fine Scottish band named after the kind of device you would find in an Ann Summers catalogue. If you're a fan of fellow label mates Mogwai or Magoo, then chances are you'll fall for the Strap too. 'Coming Down' sounds exactly like it's title indicates; a mellow acoustic number which could help make your flight from ecstasy a little less heavy and oppressive. Continuing the intimate acoustic approach is 'The Clearing', a magical song featuring Isobel and Chris from the beautiful Belle & Sebastian.
'Driving' presses on the accelerator and turns the guitars up. It's a cool number where singer Aidan Moffat sounds as deadpan as The Fall's motor-mouth frontman Mark E Smith. 'I Work In A Saloon' is one of my favourites as it's a song laced with genre humorous contradictions. The music is perfect, a country & western soundtrack with the occasional slide guitar, over which Moffat sings about "pouring shit pints for shit wages." 'Wasting' also strays into Palace Brothers / Smog territory, especially lyrics of "fuck love, fake love, then start again and lose again." If Will Oldham ever hears it he'll probably think of recording it.
'The First Big Weekend' is another little beauty where Moffat has us hanging on his every word as he narrates a tale of "quite pretty" blonde girls, drinking wine & sleeping through football matches. It's a catchy number with a tense backdrop of tight drumming, fuzzy cymbals and groovy guitars, which is more than can be said for 'Gereral Plea To A Girlfriend'. I hope to death this song is a joke because it sticks out like a sore thumb: awful lyrics, excruciating singing and hitting-a-dustbin-lid-with-a-wooden-spoon drumming. 'Little Girls' is Vic Chestnutt after a few too many beers; furious acoustic strumming and vitriolic lyrics about girls and ex-girlfriends.
'Kate Moss', 'Deeper' and 'Phone Me Tonight' are all lovely tunes that seem to ache. They pale in comparison to 'Blood' however, a gorgeous number that echoes the talents of Nick Drake. Seriously, check it out! The main difference between these musicians lies clearly in the themes, whilst Drake used to write about nature, the change of the seasons and loneliness - Arab Strap write about love, lust & doomed relationships: "I'm looking for a woman but I'd settle for a shag."
ELLIOT REUBEN
Tangents
It's a cinematic record. Like some warped soundtrack to a post-Trainspotting docu-drama on Glaswegian Youth Kulture, it's a voyeuristic record, a record of lives that may well be as full of love and squalor as they are full of substance abuse and peculiar relationships. It's a record of the fucked up and the fucked over.
It's a ravishing record. Musically it's a showcase for minimalist, pared down neo-folk. Post-folk if you must, and there are those who must, I am sure. Everything is kept crisp and downbeat, a lazy shuffle of guitars and stroked drums which occasionally give way to drum machines limited to basic tinny beats. The downbeats work best on tracks like the excellent 'The Clearing' and 'Blood', but perhaps the most immediate moment comes with the insertion of those machine beats into 'The First Big Weekend', in classic timing as the story reaches the point of going to The Arches for a Friday night out. This is a tune that is as perfect a reflection of the spirit of summer loves for it's times as the Undertones' 'Here Comes The Summer' or the Lovin' Spoonful's 'Summer In The City' were for theirs.
It's easy to imagine some Warholian figure of today writing in years to come that in their studio, The Arab Strap were playing all summer long whilst the streets outside got dustier and emptier. And always the undisguised Glasgow accents are a central element, reinforcing the narrative quality which is central to the concept of folk music.
It's a funny record. You laugh in the knowledge that this is not your life. Or at least, if it reflects moments that are recognisable from your life then it does so by exaggerating those moments and transferring the feelings onto a canvas that is more grim in its content. So it's an uneasy humour at times. At others though it's the humour of children, notably in the peculiar low level recordings of what sound like spontaneous improvisations; poem songs recorded on cheap tape recorders, full of that grimy underside of life in the 90s, and funny as fuck. This is kids' stuff; the kids' stuff when you played with tape recorders and made up a load of shit just because you could. Diary entries rhymed on tape.
Most hilarious is the final line of the final epic, 'Deeper'; a cautionary tale of attempted teen seduction by a friends' elder sister. It's moody as hell; a pure VU workout fronted by a mournful sounding kid who resents the attempt to steal away his innocence. In the end he just says No, desperate to retain that endless summer naivet?. Which is as fine a way of describing the entire Arab Strap experience as any.
It's a record you should own.
ALASTAIR FITCHETT