Perhaps rather than The Red Thread, the brothers MacSomber should have called their new album The Red Threadbare. The perma-posture of self-loathing has-- to no one's surprise, really-- almost totally burned itself out; consequently the group's dependably rich musical arrangements have to work harder than ever now to justify the repetitious circus of misery and sexual obsession that's characterized the band to the present. That's the bad news. The not so bad news is that-- galling lack of novelty and progress notwithstanding-- the boys from Falkirk have made another better-than-average album.
The celebrated songwriting duo of Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton have four studio albums under their collective belt. And they'd have you believe you this is their best effort yet. Not so. It's simply on par. Moffat continues to spin his grim little narratives about relationship hell and dead sex, and his lyrics are as piquant, morbidly funny, and, of course, sad as ever. In "Last Orders," he sings, "We could pretend that this never started/ That you're still shy, I'm still broken-hearted/ And we'll get pissed just to watch the telly/ I'll get worked up when you flesh your belly." Aidan always clothes the pain of love gone wrong in the most mundane details; his strength has always been a knack for capturing those details and presenting them in a sympathetic light.
The Red Thread offers little in the way of memorable melodies. Moffat's voice never has and will never be a "song" voice. But as a vessel for his ever-lugubrious poems, and as a foil to the florid but coldly impersonal music, you couldn't ask for more. In the tension between Moffat's acrid, pained bursts of psychological commentary and the alternately pretty and negligible music is where Arab Strap gets its most mileage.
Two sentences back, I almost wrote "background music." Therein lies the biggest problem with this band. Not to disparage their music, as much of it borders on gorgeous, but if the lyrics sucked, no one would give a shit. Let's be honest here: the main allure of the group is their psychological dimension and their bleak, haggis-sex-noir storytelling. You can slag a band like Low for making the same album over and over, but at the end of the day, it's hard to wear out "pretty." You can pick up any Low album and enjoy it (if you're disposed to that kind of thing), provided you don't listen to several of their albums in a short timespan. Arab Strap, however, leaning heavily on their emotional S&M; routine, are bound to run out of tricks sooner than later.
This album does indeed have flashes of beautiful music. "Screaming in the Trees" is the album's sparsest track, eschewing percussion and superfluous instrumentation, while drawing on the natural atmospherics of the space around Moffat's voice and a lone guitar track. As if to underscore the theme of space, there's an inordinately long silence between the song's end and the beginning of the next track.
"The Long Sea" is The Red Thread's most magisterial and engaging piece of music, building up over five minutes before incorporating fuzzy major chords over a minor background. Adele Bethel's voice and horns can be faintly heard through the delay-addled din. Both of these songs, as well as "Infrared" and the cinematic "Haunt Me," feature music that rises to the level of the lyrical performance-- but that, more importantly, is of high enough quality to justify the endless additions to Moffat's book of misanthropy and self pity.
Generally speaking, though, the music offers few surprises this go around, relying instead of the tried-and-true guitar arpeggios, atmospheric noises and orchestral, rainy-day crescendos. The album's first UK single, "Love Detective," about a guy waiting for his lover to leave for work so he can open up her red metal cashbox full of secrets, is typical of the band's strengths and weaknesses. The emotional Pandora's box trope, the semi-humorous reflection on paranoia and jealousy, and the vignette structure of the lyrics are at odds with a lackluster musical foundation that sounds like hybrid of the theme music from Rocky and "Peanuts" as interpreted by Fiona Apple-- a combination that spells "fucking awful" no matter how drunk you are.
I suppose there are equally valid arguments for and against a band like Arab Strap. Some people will want to own their entire discography, not because there's astonishing variation between the releases or measurable growth as time wears on, but rather, for much the same reason people own several Raymond Carver novels. Carver's stories are basically all the fuckin' same, and so are Moffat's. Yet, where else can you turn to hear your basest emotions, your most abject emotional episodes, or your most petty reflexes celebrated and dignified in this way?
Moffat's gift for both eulogy and bile, and for making the unpalatable much less so is striking, repetition be damned. And maybe some of his appeal springs from the lyrical redundancy. Moffat, or at least the persona he assumes for Arab Strap, is damned to pushing the slippery boulder of emotional self-sabotage up the hill for all eternity like a Scottish Sisyphus, but also, so that we don't have to do it ourselves. It's only music, though, so either way, you're still fucked.
