Rock Action – 05 February 2021
“I don’t give a fuck about the past”
After a fairly long absence, Arab Strap is back, and holy shit are they back. It’s been sixteen years since The Last Romance and their new album As Days Get Dark is absolutely worth the wait.
Consider the opening of the first track “The Turning of Our Bones,” over which vocalist Aiden Moffat sings, “I don’t give a fuck about the past or glory days gone by.” This is a band that clearly isn’t going to pay lip service to the devoted cult following they’ve amassed over the years. And I have to say that this track is just so fucking cool. The opening drum machine part initially calls to mind lots of indie-pop bands that Arab Strap came up with in the mid-90’s, but the slow layering of parts over each other is so much more complex and exciting.
Moffat’s vocal delivery throughout the record is really on point. It’s obvious that a lot of care has been given to deciding when he should be speaking, and when he should be singing (“Here Comes Comus!” is a great example of this). And there are moments (“Comperison Pt. 1”) where he finds a unique gray area in between the two. Fair comparisons to mewithoutYou’s Aaron Weiss could be made, but they would be reductive of the specific sound that Moffat has achieved on this. I haven’t always loved previous Arab Strap albums because the vocals sometimes feel a little too meandering and formless. But the songwriting on As Days Get Dark is real tight and, for a band that has a lot of different tools at their disposal, they make real economical use of just a few ideas.
As Days Get Dark takes more of a post-punk turn, laden with low register melodic guitars with lots of chorus and reverb. There aren’t too many full chords played at all, but that’s a space that Malcolm Middleton utilizes really effectively. When we finally get moments with a lot happening, they feel like great punctuations to all the subdued music that’s come before. A stand out track is “I Once A Weak Man,” which has a great use of a string quartet. It’s a really welcome addition to the landscape after a lot of drum machine / guitar / spoken word textures.
I really can’t recommend As Days Get Dark enough. It’s something of a departure for the band, featuring a lot more formal structures in their songwriting that are complimented well by the vocals. But the atmosphere is great, too. Previous Arab Strap records have sometimes felt like sound collages or found objects, great in their own right, but this new collection has the weight of a Godspeed You! Black Emperor album. It’s powerful and it’s moody and it’s diverse and it’s pretty much everything I want out of music.
Musician and writer – I play in Cheap City and run Dollhouse Lightning
