Barbelith Underground > Radio & Music

Arab Strap and I got together in the heady days of the Evening Session and 'The First Big Weekend of the Summer', and then I fell for Philophobia in a major way, particularly songs like 'Packs Of Three', 'Here We Go', 'New Birds' and 'Not Quite A Yes'. But then we drifted apart, and we've been out of touch for a while now - not sure if that's 'cos of me or them, but I suspect it's to do with the way I changed. I didn't want the same things anymore.

Okay, enough metaphor. I'd heard that new album The Last Romance was worth seeking out, and my verdict so far is that it really is: not every song's a winner, but on several of them, Arab Strap's lyricism has evolved to the point at which they've achieved that rare thing: you could read the lyrics without hearing the music and still get something out of them. Which is far from being a necessity in music - indeed, many artists who strive for this fuck everything else up along the way - but fortunately, the way Aidan Moffat tells 'em is also great, as is the instrumentation on the best ones. Those best ones being: '(If There's) No Hope For Us', 'Don't Ask Me To Dance', 'Speed-Date', 'There Is No End'. I might come back and talk a little about some of these when I've more time. But one interesting thing is that taken in that order, the order they appear on the album, and together with a few others, the arc they plot goes from devastating break-up (on 'No Hope For Us' Moffat describes a once wonderful relationship gone sour so plausibly, it's almost physically unsettling to listen to), to blissful togetherness. 'There Is No End' builds to an amazing crescendo of horns and a humorous list of bad things in the world - paedophiles, terrorism, all very knowingly tabloid - "They're coming!" goes the chant, and then the narrator defiantly exclaims that as long as he's with his love, "I don't care!"

Dunno where I'd put it in any list of albums of 2005, but well worth a listen, and seek out those tracks if you can in particular.