ARAB STRAP
Arab Strap call themselves, by way of some forgotten nineties newspaper, "The Proclaimers from Hell", and three decades on that still gets closer to the truth than most genre tags. Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton built the band in Falkirk on deadpan Scots vowels, drink, sex and quiet despair, split it for a decade, then brought it back in 2016 and never quite stopped. Half-Told Tales (Rock Action, 2026) lands on their thirtieth anniversary with nothing held back, fourteen tracks that swing from disco to metal to spoken word without ever losing the plot. "We've done this for 30 years," says Moffat, "so why hide anything?"
What keeps Arab Strap dangerous is the friction at its centre: Moffat and Middleton like and hate different things, and neither side ever quite wins. Grooving rhythm pulls against spiralling, rough-edged guitar, bleak observation sits one line away from a punchline, and the record's real subject turns out to be time itself, Moffat singing about lives cut short while fully aware he's deep into his own final third. Even so, he's resisted the pull toward despair this time round: after a famously dark previous record, this one carries what he calls genuine joy, hope smuggled in alongside songs about fatherhood, the manosphere and far-right grifters alike. It is a band built on contradiction that somehow still only ever sounds like one thing: itself.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Moffat anchors the stage, swaying and speak-singing his way through verses that can turn confessional, filthy or darkly funny inside the same breath, while Middleton lurks at the edges letting the guitar answer back. Expect a crowd caught somewhere between dancing and stunned silence, wit as sharp as the songs themselves, and thirty years of damage worn completely without nostalgia.
