In a 2009 interview with Stereokill, Malcolm Middleton claimed that of all the albums he's recorded, his favorite is the first, Arab Strap's The Week Never Starts Round Here. "It's completely undiluted and free from any self-expectations which we later developed," was the reason he gave, and this makes sense when you're thinking about albums from the standpoint of a creator. Listening back is like finding yourself in a snapshot from when you were younger and the complications hadn't added up in your life yet. For a listener, of course, it's a bit different-- those same self-expectations that make Middleton uneasy when listening to his later work can nonetheless help a band create something greater, and I think age actually helped Arab Strap. Their final two albums, Monday At the Hug & Pint and Last Romance, are really fine records. The complications had piled up for sure, but the band's outlook changed as well, and their more nuanced way of looking at the world made for their best music.
It's still interesting, though, to go back and revisit the band's debut and follow-up, especially with the bigger picture of their subsequent career in mind. Chemikal Underground's deluxe reissues bulk up the sound a little bit (but not too much) and each add a bonus disc with a Peel Session and a live performance that offer a more complete look at the band's early career than the albums alone would have. The Week Never Starts Round Here is in fact a pretty unpretentious, honest sounding record. Middleton, who did the instrumentals, and Aidan Moffat, who handled the vocals and lyrics, were a unique, fearless band right out of the gate, and Moffat's approach to sex and the exquisite misery of sleeping around and staying drunk immediately set them apart.
You can hear what Middleton was talking about in that interview, too. The record rambles quite a bit, to the point where it feels a fair amount longer than its 45-minute running time. There are a couple tracks that end with demo-sounding recordings of Moffat singing by himself, "General Plea to a Girlfriend" is abrasively lo-fi, and a few of the songs are a bit shapeless, but the duo's basic sound is well-established, with Middleton's guitar and drum machines laying out rough, urban landscapes for Moffat to wander through. Moffat's vocals were often aggressively amelodic, a speak-sing whose shape was heavily governed by his thick Scottish accent and Scots dialect, so he gets by more on detailed storytelling than a big chorus. There are some amazing moments, though-- Middleton's guitar on "I Work in A Saloon" is delicate and light, providing an almost absurd counterpoint to Moffat's character sketch of a bartender who's stuck in a bar full of women he's slept with and split with.
And of course, there's the band's debut single, "The First Big Weekend", which epitomizes everything great about Arab Strap and points the way toward their later work with its taut dance rhythm, snapping guitar and brilliant weekend-in-the-life lyrics. Moffat and his friends drink all night and crash all day, but there's so much more to it: they sleep through the indignity of Scotland's loss to England at Euro 1996, fail to win the canteen quiz night, get misty-eyed watching "The Simpsons", invade a playground, give each other questionable advice (i.e., giving up cheese to avoid nightmares) and take the train. It builds up to the big sing-along refrain: "Went out for the weekend, it lasted for ever, high with our friends it's officially summer." The real key to why it all works, though, is that Moffat stuffs the whole range of emotions into lyrics-- it's a good time, but there's frustration and sadness in it all too. He sees women he still loves but also hates for the indignities they've visited upon him (and he on them), and he gets bruised jumping a fence. It feels real.
Philophobia opens with a hell of a couplet: "It was the biggest cock you'd ever seen/ But you've no idea where that cock has been." In some sense, this is the band responding to that self-expectation Middleton referred to later. They put the sex and disturbance right up front, almost caricaturing themselves before getting down to the business of placing all that imagery in the context of stories. They may have had self-expectations on Philophobia, but the pair had also acquired discipline and made a better album, one that works almost as a song cycle-- the consistency of Moffat's storytelling and subject matter turns the album into a full-fleshed character study with each song acting as a sort of chapter in the story of some boozing bloke's wrecked and often wretched life. Middleton grew as an arranger as well, incorporating occasional strings, more sophisticated drum programming and more keyboards, and he joins Moffat in injecting a bit of humor as well, especially on "Not Quite a Yes", where his beat is hilariously stadium-ready. The songs have more shape to them and consequently so does the album.
The albums stand well on their own, but the bonus discs are very welcome, not least because the live recordings actually offer superior versions of quite a few of these songs. The two Peel Sessions are especially lively and illuminating. On the first, the band is backed by members of Belle & Sebastian, sounding distinctly unlike their other band as they mash the distortion pedals and hammer the drums, and Moffat delivers the non-album track "I Saw You" in a straight deadpan as he talks about going to see a Belle & Sebastian show, remarking that the girl he had a crush on at the time was friends with "the girl who plays the cello." The Week Never Starts Round Here also includes a full recording of the band's first live performance, a ragged but energetic set at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, while Philophobia gives you the band's full set at the T In The Park festival from 1998.
The live material hints at the fuller sound the band would later explore on its best albums-- certainly, there'd be no cause to complain if the rest of the band's output got a similar treatment. What's most fascinating about these two LPs, though, is hearing Moffat and Middleton sort out how to make these mumbly barstool rants and gutter stories into compelling songs. They didn't always succeed, but their best early songs were outstanding and set them apart from virtually everyone else on the Scottish and larger UK music scene.
