More about: Arab Strap

Aidan Moffat is surrounded by the cultural detritus of someone who is interested in absolutely everything. “Let me get my glasses”, he says as he reaches for Unearthing The Fox, one of several non-fiction books that inspired Arab Strap comeback album As Days Get Dark. He’s looking for the author of said book (Lucy Jones, if you’re in the market) and wants to make sure his memory serves him correctly. Minutes later, he pulls a record from his collection, and moments after that he’s foraging for the exact name of the painting that features on the cover of As Days Get Dark.

“Let me get this absolutely right” he says. He pauses, then relates the information: “The Night Escorted by the Geniuses of Love and Study by Pedro Américo. And it’s from 1886.”

I’m interested in the cover art and how it fits so spectacularly with the themes of the record...hence the sifting of assorted books and papers to find the correct title. “The night is a seductress, you know?” Aidan says, connecting the nocturnal colouring of the album to its cover, “It just seems so welcoming and inviting. The night can be intoxicating. Originally it was just the painting on the cover in a sort of frame but it didn’t look quite right so we tried on some ideas. There was a theme of windows on the record: windows on the computer; literal windows and the stories behind them, so [the cover] started to develop from that.”

Pedro Américo’s painting is overlaid on a photo of someone wearing lingerie (referencing the sweet but sticky ‘Another Clockwork Day’), which itself is overlaid on a desktop picture showing lit windows in an apartment block. All three appear as windows on a Mac, their beauty and their strange familiarity re-contextualised in the frame of the computer. It’s an inspired cover to introduce As Days Get Dark, an album that's as deliciously sordid as it is touching, in the way that an internet video of an old, one-eyed cat is touching.

Foxes Unearthed helped to guide such liminal themes, appearing in the both literal and allegorical ‘Fable of the Urban Fox’. “A book about nightlife in London”, Aidan told Snack Mag, also made its way into the album, most notably on ’Kebabylon’, which contrasts the debauched night out of a typical city dweller with the lonely task of the city sweeper (sample lyrics: “And you're already dreaming/as I claw up your condom”). “A book about death rituals” appears in the mesmerising ‘The Turning of Our Bones’, as reported to Stereogum.

As you can see, Aidan Moffat is quite the reader of non-fiction. “I just started one yesterday” he tells me. Award-winning The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack The Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold is already impressing Aidan—“she’s making revelations in the first five pages”—but if it weren’t, rest assured he wouldn’t endeavour to read it. “I don’t understand people who persevere with books that they don’t enjoy."

“Comfort”, Aidan acknowledges, “is very important” in the consumption of art. As such, in 2020 he indulged in the Alan Partridge podcast (“I think it’s the best thing he’s ever done”). He enjoyed Drifters. He re-watched The Sopranos: “It was hard to engage with stuff last year. I spent most of it re-watching what I already know.” Aidan’s vinyl collection, a couple of hundred items lighter after a trip to Oxfam, has also been dusted off. “I’ve been pulling out old things I haven’t heard in a while. I’ll take out a record, play a few songs off it and then think ‘do you know what, I’ll go for a walk and listen to it.’” He reaches for the cabinet now, feeling for the “special” cubby filled with “expensive and rare things” and pulls out a Santo & Johnny record—“one of my favourites!”

As Days Get Dark, Arab Strap’s first album in 16 years, will likely make its way into the special sections of many peoples’ vinyl collections thanks to its glorious surround-sound drama and its ability to inspire that thrilling leap in the stomach. It’s a misty, pitch dark journey through dastardly British streets lit from within by synths that act as the neon signs atop cathedrals of sin.

As ever, the album was written as such: Malcolm Middleton provided fleeting sections of guitar or piano, upon which Aidan would add his lyrical painting. Then, the pair of them would build the songs up to their final, cogent conclusions. ‘Another Clockwork Day’ for example, finds an instrumental climax just as its protagonist reaches orgasm. In this instance, did the music come first? I ask, to titters from both of us. Aidan explains, shedding light on the songwriting process as a whole: “The tune felt intimate and sly. What I got from the guitar part that Malcolm sent first of all was a secretive, intimate, late night thing, and that lead me to think about the word…and then we added the other parts.”

As in this song, Aidan has done something completely new as a whole on As Days Get Dark: he has written from the perspectives of others. “All the Arab Strap songs from the first ten years, all of them except one—and I’m not going to tell you which—was true. Every single one of them. I think certainly the windows idea came from that. I’m more interested [now] in writing about things I haven’t experienced.” As such, on this album, the listener gets tableaux of a family of downtrodden foxes (‘Fable of the Urban Fox’), a fictional god Comus (‘Here Comes Comus!’), a veritable scumbag (‘I Was Once a Weak Man’)…

In all of them, details abound, making for a much richer experience than many songs offer. “Often things that seem small are very important and universal” Aidan agrees, “I don’t remember who said it, but if you write about details, you’re probably writing about everyone to a degree. The smaller you get, the bigger you get sometimes in scope. What’s lovely is that when you catch someone’s imagination with a detail that sounds intimate and specific but everyone has experienced in some way. It’s a good way to draw someone in.”

Through his reading and what is clearly a particular gift for observation, Aidan Moffat has helped to pen one of the year's most evocative and exciting albums. As Days Get Dark sparkles sinfully, like crushed glass on a pavement. It leers out of the dark with an ever-changing face. After a 16 year break, it reasserts Arab Strap as a unique band making unique music. From the studio of Malcolm Middleton and the cultural mecca that is Aidan's flat, more is brewing. The tour begins this September, and if we're lucky, an EP could follow in 2022. 

More about: Arab Strap