ScottishNews.com

The follow-up to 2024’s ‘I’m totally fine with it’ reunites Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton with producer Paul Savage, who recorded the Falkirk duo’s first album and has worked on their three most recent records.

Ahead of the album’s release and a major anniversary show at Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom, Aidan and Malcolm spoke to ScottishNews.com about bringing more hope to their music, how their unusual creative partnership has survived and the places that shaped Arab Strap.

There seems to be more joy in this record than the previous one. Was that a deliberate decision?

Aidan: It’s a bit of both. I don’t think about these things too deeply before we start making a record. Before I start writing, I just do what comes naturally.

But I did start to realise that I was hopefully injecting a bit more positivity into these things, because the last two records were pretty dark. The last one especially was. Even what I think is the best song on the last album – certainly my favourite one, “Bliss” – is a pretty dark song about the way women are abused online.

Even the most accessible, danceable song on the last record had a pretty dark twist to it. Subconsciously, I was trying to be a bit more positive.

As it developed – and it’s not all positive, because there’s a sadness to it too – the lyrics became focused on the passage of time, how things change and how time’s arrow only moves forward.

But I think there is a bit of hope, joy and connection in it too. About halfway through making the record, it became conscious and started to inform what else I was writing about.

Malcolm: Sorry, did I miss a memo or something? Is this our happy record?

Aidan: I wouldn’t say it was necessarily happy. Happy is always a bit of a stretch when it comes to Arab Strap records. But it’s fun and, hopefully, there will be moments of emotion as well.

How has the way you make music as Arab Strap changed over the past 30 years?

Malcolm: It’s still pretty much the same. In the olden days, I would be at my mum’s house, pick up the landline and call Aidan’s mum’s house. I’d play the guitar down the phone to him.

He would have a think about it, then we’d talk about it later. We might record something on a dictaphone cassette and hand it to each other in the pub.

It would evolve from there. Maybe we’d get the four-track out, or maybe we’d just go dancing for the night, forget about it and come back to it a few weeks later.

It’s the same now, except Aidan will send me some drums or samples and I’ll put some guitar on them. Or I’ll send him some guitars and he’ll add drums and samples. It will go back and forth a few times.

We work best in this band remotely, separately from each other, and the collaboration happens in the air between us.

Aidan: As Malcolm said, it’s pretty much the same. It’s only the technology that has changed. All the things we wanted to do but couldn’t afford in the 1990s are now free.

“The First Big Weekend”, which is 30 years old this year, has a really shitty drum machine on it that doesn’t sound anything like the drums we imagined. But it was the only drum machine we had at the time – and we had borrowed it, as I recall. I think it was Stuart the postman’s drum machine.

We had to use what we could afford and that’s where the charm came from. I think that’s why it worked. These days, all those things that were out of reach back then are practically free.

We have a much broader scope and library, and much better tools at our hands. Fundamentally, though, the way we work is precisely the same. We send things to each other, work independently and then come together when we’re ready to make a song.

Malcolm: You might think we’ve lost some of the charm, but we still don’t know what we’re doing with all this free stuff. We’re still winging it and making it up as we go along.

What is the secret to staying friends in a band for 30 years?

Malcolm: Don’t see each other for half the year when you’re not touring.

Aidan: When we split up in 2006, I think it was through sheer exhaustion with each other. It happens to every band. You get to a point where you just can’t imagine where you’re going to go next.

After that, we got on much better because we weren’t doing Arab Strap. Then we came back together. When you get older, you understand your roles in the band a wee bit better. There’s certainly less tension than there was in 2005.

Malcolm: The best thing a band can do, especially when you start quite young and the first five or six years are quite mental, is have some time off.

We could probably just have had a long holiday, but being away from the band, doing our own things and then going back gave us perspective on what was good about it and what we enjoyed.

You also begin to recognise the uniqueness you brought to it that other bands don’t have, because they have their own thing. Distance and perspective make you appreciate it more. I think that’s a good thing for any band.

Aidan: In 2005, when we decided to split up, it was impossible for me to think remotely objectively about what we had done. We were just tired of it.

After some time apart, you start to think differently. We made a compilation in 2016 for our anniversary on Chemikal Underground and picked our favourite songs. In doing that, I think we realised what we enjoyed about the band and what made it exciting for us.

That jump-started the idea that we were going to do new material. It’s all part of growing up and learning about yourself.

Are you comfortable writing music from the perspective you have now, rather than trying to sound like the young men who formed Arab Strap?

Aidan: For me, certainly. It’s not just about the lyrics; it’s about the music too.

When we reformed, the last thing we wanted to do was try to recapture the sounds or emotions of what we did when we were young. I think that’s sheer folly. The bands that try that usually fail quite badly.

If you want to keep going, you have to be honest and reflect the world around you rather than try to capture your youth. There are very few things that give you more of a red neck than watching old men trying to be young men.

When we started making new records, we said we weren’t here to remake our old music. The focus was on now and what we could do now.

We can use the tools available to us now and also draw on our experience. We didn’t stop making records when the band split up. We kept doing our own things and learned a lot more that way. That’s what made it fun – having all that extra time, knowledge and experience to bring back to Arab Strap.

Malcolm: That’s really charming. Then cut to us at the Barrowland in a month’s time, two 50-year-olds singing “The First Big Weekend”.

Aidan: It’s coming back out because it’s having a birthday too. Like any band that had a popular song at the start of its career, we have a complicated relationship with it. I wouldn’t say love-hate, but you want to focus on the new material.

We’re also in a position where we have so many old songs, and it’s our anniversary this year, that we have to find a balance between the new stuff and the old.

Malcolm: It’s good to bring it back. It’s funny because it’s our biggest song and we only played it for two years. For the last eight years of the first part of our career, we didn’t play it at all.

That was probably daft, but we can be a bit obtuse sometimes. We’re doing it now because it’s our anniversary.

Did you enjoy making the video for “Glamour Magick”?

Malcolm: I think Aidan did. I was just standing around with a Highland cow head on. It was the hottest day of the year, I think, so that was great.

Aidan: I really enjoy it. I enjoy working with Dave, the director. He made our video for “Strawberry Moon” from the last album, which I really loved as well. I like the visuals he comes up with.

I also worked with him years ago on a film I made, Where You’re Meant to Be, so working with someone I know is important to the enjoyment of it all.

It’s the same when we make records. We’ve been working with Paul Savage for the past three albums and he recorded our first record.

I think you get better results if you know and trust the person you’re working with. If we made a record or a video with a new director or producer I’d never met before and they were a bit bossy, I don’t think I’d respond in the same way I do with Paul and Dave.

Malcolm: They had me in that Highland cow thing for hours. It wasn’t until later in the day that I realised they could have got anyone to wear it because you can’t see me.

Aidan: It’s all about the posture. Trust me, I could see it.

Malcolm: That’s what Dave said, but I still feel like I was swindled.

Aidan: There was a bit you did that wasn’t in the video that was quite sad. You poked your head up above the bar when I was playing pool, but they didn’t use it. I really liked that one.

Malcolm: I think I was overacting.

Aidan: That’s it. You ruined it. Chewing the scenery.

How important is it that Glasgow remains a city where people can afford to form bands and do creative work?

Aidan: Definitely. A lot of venues are struggling and I think that’s important. Every scene needs a venue to focus on. Every band needs somewhere to play, connect with audiences and build up its sound.

There are a lot of factors involved and no single solution. There are wider issues with the economy. It certainly seems much harder for bands these days to dedicate time to being in a band because you have to have another job at the same time.

There are very few younger bands I know whose members don’t have jobs outside music, because it’s harder to make money from it.

Glasgow is suffering a wee bit just now. There are a lot of people saying they’re struggling to keep venues open, which needs to be addressed.

But it’s also a city that looks after itself. There has always been a good community of musicians. Even when we started, I knew loads of musicians whose music I didn’t necessarily like, but we all looked out for each other and helped each other at gigs.

That still exists. It’s a very creative town and people look out for each other. You can’t be expected to like everybody’s music, but there’s a common purpose when you’re young guys in a band trying to be heard and supporting each other. Glasgow has always been very good at that.

Which places in Scotland tell the story of Arab Strap?

Aidan: It would start in Falkirk, of course.

Malcolm: I would probably go to Firkins first, then Penny’s. I don’t know what Firkins is called now. Then we would drift over to Glasgow for Sleazy’s, The Arches and the Barrowland.

Aidan: And the CCA. The crucible would have been somewhere like Firkins or Penny’s. There was also Café Noir, which became the Cantina and is now called something else again.

Nice N Sleazy was the hub of our part of the Glasgow music scene when we were coming through.

Malcolm: It was a difficult time to be an indie kid in Falkirk because all these places were right in the hornet’s nest of football casuals and people who wanted to kill us. You went up the stairs with clenched fists.

I think everyone mixes better now and there’s less of that tribal stuff – musically and culturally.

Arab Strap’s ninth studio album Half Told Tails will be released on 4September.