At first, I was upset when Arab Strap broke up, but I'm beginning to think it was actually a well-disguised blessing. Both members, Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat, have gone on to make music as good as their former band's-- first Middleton, on 2007's A Brighter Beat, and then Moffat on his music & poetry album I Can Hear Your Heart, and now with his new, band-ish agglomeration of musical friends, the Best-Ofs. His two principle collaborators on How to Get to Heaven From Scotland are Stevie Jones and ex-Delgado Alun Woodward, but it's an informal arrangement, and he's certainly not averse to a little light orchestration here and there.
The album has a ramshackle feel befitting Moffat's creaky barroom croon, with bits of accordion, cello, woodwind, ragged electric guitar, and loud drums sharing space in the arrangements. Part of the appeal of Moffat's songwriting is that the relationships between people in his lyrics are as complicated as real life, and his trademark storminess is tempered with tenderness and humane admissions that blame is always something to be shared.
Perhaps the most striking musical moment on the whole record comes on opener "Lover's Song", when Moffat's a cappella vocal, already interesting for the way he doubles the lyrics with a wordless back-up, is unexpectedly joined by a human beat box. There's nothing else quite as jaw-dropping, but there's plenty of great stuff, from the tense drones and dense, cooped-up atmosphere of "A Scenic Route to the Isle of Ewe" to the pretty, levitating "Atheist's Lament", a song any unreligious person can relate to, including non-atheists who just aren't into dogma. "Oh Men!" and "That's Just Love" are celebratory drinking songs, and distinctly Scottish-sounding ones at that. In fact, the Scottish character of the whole album runs a lot deeper than just Moffat's thick, pleasing brogue.
Moffat always wrote about the underside of life in Arab Strap, but even at his most woe-is-me moments it never felt like a complaint. He's crawled further out into the light here than ever before, and the album comes off like a celebration of life's complications and contradictions rather than a lament for them. "Lullaby for Unborn Child" includes a recording of his then-unborn child's heartbeat (it sounds oddly like war drums), and one can't help but wonder if becoming a father hasn't brightened his outlook some. It's on this song that Moffat's embrace of imperfection crystalizes most vivdly: "I can't promise you'll be happy/ But I can promise you my best." We get his best on How to Get to Heaven From Scotland, an album any Arab Strap fan could love.
