Arab Strap
As Days Get Dark
(ROCK ACTION)
There was a poetic arc to Arab Strap’s initial run from “The First Big Weekend” to The Last Romance—“Ten Years of Tears,” as the Scottish duo clocked it. Any creative reunion of Aidan Moffat (vocals, drum machine) and Malcom Middleton (guitar, other instruments) after 15 years would demand weight, and the gravity of the moment was met with “The Turning of Our Bones” when it dropped at the end of last summer. In a storm of delightfully grotesque imagery, Arab Strap were resurrected by a dance of undead love.
Neither Moffat nor Middleton have been missing all this time, and As Days Get Dark doesn’t rehash what has been done or resist what hasn’t. After the split, Moffat picked up under the name L. Pierre and branched out from there (his Here Lies the Body with RM Hubbert from 2018 is exceptional), while Middleton has stayed similarly active under his own name and Human Don’t Be Angry. It’s inevitable that the two of them today would be “older and wiser,” as they acknowledge, but that comes through in mortality-tinged lyrics and refined melodic decisions, not weariness or reserve. As Days Get Dark does not lack for vigor or vulnerability, awkward honesty, or an unblinking eye.
Lust has not left Arab Strap in the least, though here the heated jealousies and drunken dramas of one’s sexual prime have settled down some as attentions spiral around muddled transgressions and modest kinks. The softly spoken and oddly heartening “Another Clockwork Day” finds a middle-aged man, dismayed by the degenerate details of modern online pornography, turning to old personal photos of his partner while she sleeps in their bedroom. “Compersion Pt. 1” and “I Was Once a Weak Man” paint throbbing pictures of strange rooms and strange trysts in autumn shades. In his vivid and seedy scenes, Moffat offers broader questions: Do we carry on doing the things we do because we enjoy them or because they are habits? How do you make passion stay?
As Days Get Dark does not have a mere one-track mind. “Fable of the Urban Fox” is an articulate illustration of the immigrant’s plight in the face of increasing xenophobia. “Tears on Tour” is narrated by a protagonist who cries at everything and once had dreams of becoming “the opposite of a comedian” who travels the country delivering sad monologues on stage and selling “souvenir handkerchiefs embroidered with tour dates available at the foyer after the show”—a parallel universe version of Arab Strap, perhaps. “Sleeper” reimagines a journey toward the afterlife in the club car of an overnight train.
To date there has been no consummate Arab Strap album. If anything, their 1999 live record Mad for Sadness comes close, but that was released before half of their career and many of their finest moments, from “Cherubs” to “Turbulence” to “Dream Sequence.” As Days Get Dark carries on their traditions of intimate ambience and tug-of-war technique, but commendably, it doesn’t seek to summarize so much as add to their inimitable story.(www.arabstrap.scot)
By Ian King
Julien Baker
Little Oblivions
(MATADOR)
While I love Julien Baker’s music, I oftentimes have to be in a certain mood to listen to it. Her particular style of brutally honest singer/ songwriter music is obviously ill-suited for a party or a breezy car ride, but it’s also sometimes too much, to me, for even a casual listen. Usually, Baker’s music soundtracks the sort of disconsolate, searching moments that she herself explored on 2017’s Turn Out the Lights and 2015’s Sprained Ankle. However, that aspect might have changed with her newest work. Julien Baker sounds reinvented on Little Oblivions, employing an expanded sound that is instantly gratifying and anthemic, drawing you in before hitting you with the full force of its crushing emotional weight.
Whereas the first moments on Turn Out the Lights are understated and meditative, opening with a creaking door and an atmospheric piano instrumental, Baker announces her return in dramatic fashion on Little Oblivions. The swelling opening tones of “Hardline” feel unlike anything thus far in her discography with crashing drums and distorted guitars, making her sound more rich and vibrant than ever. Yet, the startlingly gorgeous heights on “Relative Fiction” or “Ringside” never feel like a cynical gimmick and only heighten the impact of searing ballads such as “Crying Wolf.”
Despite the expanded instrumental palette, might also be Baker’s bleakest album yet. For an artist that has been long known for works of despondent emotion, that is no small feat. Her self-excoriating reflections are just as present and cutting here as on her previous work, in no way blunted by the record’s sweeping instrumental grandeur. Baker’s demons are a constant
