8/10
If opening up your records with some good old fashioned swears is what you’re after, then Arab Strap have form, 1998’s Philophobia beginning with the immortal line, ‘It was the biggest cock you’d ever seen’.
But there’s something oddly plangent about the kick-off to The Turning Of Our Bones – the Scottish duo’s first side 1, track 1 in sixteen years – one which jumps in headfirst with singer Aidan Moffat confessing, ‘I don’t give a fuck about the past’.
Certain parts of his and partner Malcolm Middleton’s story are familiar through the history of other reconciled acts; that there was never any thought of a reformation until working together after over a decade of self-imposed drift; that they were unprepared to make artistic compromises, and that, as the line of that previously mentioned track goes, any new work had to be well distanced from what had gone before.
What couldn’t
Arab Strap write a song about? Their seventh studio album, As Days Get Dark , retains the mordant wit and scrumptious miserabilism that’s kept them the pride of Falkirk.
But don’t arrive expecting the old comedown ballads. Though they were roused back to life by 2016’s heroes-welcomed reunion tour, As Days Get Dark doesn’t deal in the old material. It declares its stance from the first lines: “I don’t give a fuck about the past, our glory days gone by / All I care about right now is that wee mole inside your thigh”.
Maturity doesn’t mean mediocrity. It’s turned their focus widescreen, though the beady eye doesn’t spare its glee for the gory details. It’s just bigger, in every way. Musically, texturally, lyrically. Working with long-term production ally