Arab Strap - News

“10 Years Of Tears” - Arab Strap’s swansong as the curtain comes down on one of the UK’s most unique acts.
So it’s with a lump in our throats that we have to announce the impending dissolution of Arab Strap. After a career spanning ten years, Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton have decided to wind up a musical partnership that has rightly earned its place in musical folklore. It’s rare nowadays for a band to stake any sort of legitimate claim on originality; with Arab Strap, it’s a claim to which they can feel richly entitled; over the last decade they have pursued a musical vision so singular in its tone and inventive in its execution that they found themselves in a genre almost entirely of their own.

For Chemikal Underground, Arab Strap’s decision to dissolve represents something far more significant than the ending of a band’s career: it’s the end of an era. When we received a demo cassette back in 1996, neatly packaged in a hand made green box (emblazoned with a leaping frog of all things), it marked the beginning of a relationship that would have all the hallmarks of the trysts recounted in Arab Strap’s albums. Awkward courtships, alcohol-soaked mutual appreciations and alcohol-fuelled tirades of frustration and disappointment; messy break-ups, sanguine reunions and fraught disagreements over the conception of albums; Arab Strap and Chemikal Underground have been together longer than some marriages, so it’s hardly surprising that we’ll look back on their career with a heady concoction of love, regret, gratitude and, most importantly, admiration for a band that was, quite simply, one of a kind.

“So that was the first big weekend of the summer”, Aidan drolly informed us 10 years ago this month when their debut single hit the airwaves. What followed was an intoxicating flurry of interest in a band that no-one had heard of; rumours abounded that they didn’t exist and were actually another band in disguise; Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley’s Evening Session proceeded to play the track on 13 consecutive shows (a record that remains unbeaten today) and hailed The First Big Weekend as “the best single of the decade”. The track would go on to feature in one of Guinness’s flagship TV adverts; Arab Strap’s first ever concert was to be aired live on Radio 1 for the Peel Show; their debut album The Week Never Starts Round Here was released to a cacophony of unanimous praise and they were drummed out of Falkirk by the Lord Provost for denigrating the town’s image…

From auspicious beginnings Aidan and Malcolm went on to produce a flood of material that would articulately dissect and mournfully celebrate the human condition in a style that was as blunt as it was thrilling. Drum machines, squalling guitars, soaring strings and barber shop quartets were called upon to underscore tales of carnal design, chemically enhanced recreation and romantic aspirations (with all the attendant insecurities included) - names were not always changed to protect the innocent, unspeakable thoughts would form the spine of a chorus while vindictive rebukes would often adorn a middle eight. With Aidan and his (then) girlfriend posing nude for the portraits that would become the cover art for their second album Philophobia (an album which continues to rejoice in the immortal opening line “It was the biggest cock you’d ever seen, but you’ve no idea where that cock had been”) it was patently obvious that Arab Strap were no ordinary pop group, and would not be getting sucked into the Britpop wars that were currently raging, unchecked, in music tabloids across the UK.

Arab Strap’s journey would see them depart Chemikal Underground after Philophobia and join Go! Beat for one studio album (Elephant Shoe) and one live album (Mad For Sadness) before returning to Chemikal for The Red Thread (2001), Monday At The Hug And Pint (2003) and The Last Romance (2005). All these stages are represented on their final collection, 10 Years Of Tears, as the band collate an assortment of rarities, live tracks, demos and b-sides for a final, comprehensive and hugely entertaining epilogue to the bands career. (Read Aidan's 10 years of Tears track by track notes)

Their later albums displayed an increasingly mature take on the themes that had shaped their earlier sound, the music broader in scope; the narrative depictions of complex liaisons and vice-fuelled weekends (five years before Mike Skinner’s rise to prominence), replaced with compellingly insightful commentaries that could be in turn reflective and vehement, while often being laugh-out-loud funny (despite persistent appraisals of miserablism in the music press).

What elevated Arab Strap’s art way beyond the realms of the observational was the way in which Aidan’s lyrics were more than matched by the intelligence of Malcolm’s music. There can be no doubt that Malcolm Middleton has an uncanny grasp of all things melodic (as evidenced on his two solo albums) and it was often Malcolm’s guitars that made Aidan’s fury or disenchantment all the more palpable. As in the best partnerships there existed a constant friction; they were exacting perfectionists and stubbornly demanding in equal measure - meetings with Chemikal Underground were often battlefields of baleful stares, strafed with disagreements and saved by countless agreeable ceasefires.

From Malcolm’s drowsy bass notes at the beginning of their debut album’s opener, Coming Down, to the blithe, descending brass scale on The Last Romance’s closer There Is No Ending, Arab Strap have navigated routes few bands would have dared to travel. Their albums were musically compelling and lyrically provocative; wholly unique and courageously honest – that they never broke into the mainstream is both hardly surprising and wholly irrelevant. It’s not really the end of course, it’s important to note that both Aidan and Malcolm will continue to make music with their own individual projects: Malcolm with his burgeoning solo career; Aidan with his L. Pierre incarnation and spoken word projects. Arab Strap will also be performing one last, farewell tour around the UK and Europe.

Bands split up all the time and it’s all too easy to inflate the significance of their decision, mourning an incalculable loss to music and eulogising a legacy that may not have been bequeathed in the first place. This cannot be said for Arab Strap. They were one of UK music’s most original acts and from our point of view, it has been an absolute honour to have worked with them.

CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND
SEPTEMBER 2006.

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