Text & Interview: Danny McBride – english version below
Dreißig Jahre nach ihrer Gründung in Falkirk streiten und lachen Aidan Moffat und Malcolm Middleton noch immer miteinander und schicken Musik quer durch Schottland hin und her. Auf dem neuen Album Half-Told Tales beschäftigen sich Arab Strap mit Männlichkeit, Politik, Vergänglichkeit – und damit, warum die ruhigen Jahre noch warten können.
Es gibt einen Moment in meinem Gespräch mit Arab Strap, in dem Malcolm Middleton zu vergessen scheint, wer hier eigentlich das Interview führt.
Wir sprechen über Falkirk, die Stadt im schottischen Central Belt, in der Middleton und Moffat aufwuchsen und in der Arab Strap Mitte der 1990er Jahre entstanden. Heute lebt keiner von beiden mehr dort. Moffat spricht aus seinem Zuhause in Glasgow; Middleton ist in Anstruther, einem kleinen Fischerort an der Küste von Fife. Beide kehren wegen ihrer Familien weiterhin nach Falkirk zurück.
“I think it’s a hard one, our relationship with Falkirk,” sagt Middleton. “I think it’s important. We grew up there, and we’re from there.”
“It’s inside us, I guess. You can take the boy out of Falkirk, but you can’t take Falkirk out of the boy.”
Mitten im Gedanken dreht er die Frage plötzlich zu seinem Bandkollegen um: “Do you feel like it calls you back, Aidan? Dollar Park?” Dann merkt er selbst, was er gerade tut. “Why am I asking the question?”
Moffat lacht und antwortet trotzdem. Am Tag zuvor war er mit seiner Mutter und seinem Bruder durch Falkirk gefahren, vorbei an alten Häusern und vertrauten Orten. “I think it’s definitely part of it.”
Dollar Park, einer von mehreren Songs auf Half-Told Tales, die auf die Jugend und die Orte zurückblicken, aus denen Arab Strap stammen, handelt nicht unbedingt von Falkirk selbst. Für den Titel gab es allerdings noch einen anderen Grund. “It was either that or Callendar Park, but Callendar Park doesn’t sound as good as Dollar Park.”
Auch Under Offer blickt zurück in Moffats Vergangenheit, diesmal durch den Schrecken darüber, was spätere Besitzer aus seinem Elternhaus gemacht haben. Moffat verbrachte seine gesamte Jugend in Falkirk. “I didn’t leave Falkirk until I was 25 or something like that. Aye, so it is a big part of me.”
Falkirk liegt zwischen Glasgow und Edinburgh: nah genug, um Konzerte in beiden Städten zu besuchen, aber weit genug entfernt, um keiner der beiden Szenen wirklich anzugehören. “There was only about 100 of us,” erinnert sich Moffat an die lokale Indie-Szene. “And we weren’t all friends.”
Ich werfe ein, dass es für die beiden vielleicht schwieriger gewesen wäre, einander zu finden, wenn sie in einer größeren Stadt aufgewachsen wären. Middleton antwortet trocken: “That’s correct, but there could have been even better things.” Moffat lacht wieder.
The First Big Weekend
Als Arab Strap Mitte der 1990er Jahre auftauchten, klangen sie wie niemand sonst. Moffats unverkennbar schottischer, eher sprechender Gesang erzählte Geschichten über Sex, Beziehungen, Alkohol, männliche Verletzlichkeit, Einsamkeit und all die peinlichen Details, die Songwriter normalerweise herausredigieren. Middleton lieferte dazu Musik, die im einen Moment karg und intim, im nächsten dicht und vielschichtig sein konnte.
Ihre Durchbruchssingle The First Big Weekend erschien 1996: die Schilderung eines ganz normalen Wochenendes in Falkirk, die sowohl den Nihilismus als auch die Unschuld der Jugend einfängt. Trotz ihres sehr spezifischen Schauplatzes wirkte sie seltsam universell.
Sechs Alben folgten, bevor sich Arab Strap 2006 trennten. Als sie sich zehn Jahre später für Live-Auftritte wiedervereinigten, hätten sie sich problemlos als Legacy-Act einrichten können: eine schottische Kultband mit einem umfangreichen Katalog und einem Publikum, das ihn gerne noch einmal hören wollte. Stattdessen begannen sie einige Jahre später wieder, neue Platten aufzunehmen. Half-Told Tales ist ihr drittes Album seit der Rückkehr und ihr neuntes insgesamt. Es erscheint rund um den 30. Geburtstag der Band – und keiner der beiden scheint sonderlich daran interessiert, von Nostalgie zu leben.
Ihr gefeiertes Album Philophobia von 1998 zum 25-Jährigen bereits durch die Jubiläumsmaschine gedreht worden. “We talked about just doing our anniversary stuff,” sagt Moffat. “We were planning to focus on that more, but at a time when we’d just reformed to make new records, it just seemed like a step backwards. So why not focus on that rather than celebrate these old songs and then have to play them on tour? Over and over again.”
Ich erwähne, dass ich sie Philophobia im St Luke’s in Glasgow spielen sah, wo sie, soweit ich mich erinnere, andeuteten, einige dieser Songs danach vielleicht in Rente zu schicken. Middleton erinnert sich etwas dramatischer an das Versprechen: “In other words we said, ‘We’re never going to play anything from that record ever again.’”
Jetzt proben sie einige davon wieder. “We’ll never go back on what we say,” sagt Middleton trocken. Moffat weist auf die größere Ironie hin: “We also split up in 2006.”
Loud, quiet, slow, fast
Half-Told Tales ist unverkennbar Arab Strap: angeschlagen, witzig, intim, gelegentlich verstörend und jederzeit fähig, von Zärtlichkeit in gewaltigen Lärm umzuschlagen. Und doch wirkt etwas daran deutlich optimistischer als beim Vorgänger von 2024 mit dem großartigen Titel I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍“.
Moffat betont, dass das nicht geplant war. “It was a subconscious thing that sort of revealed itself as we went along, which is always how the lyrics work. I don’t really plan it out. We’re not this sort of band that make plans. We don’t have meetings and discussions.”
Moffat hat sich außerdem weitgehend von jener intensiven Beschäftigung mit sozialen Medien zurückgezogen, die das vorherige Album geprägt hatte. “I’m totally fine with it, there’s a lot of stuff about social media, and I kind of heeded my own words. It turns out that you can be a lot more positive about the world when you’re not embroiled in that sort of shit.” Seine alten Accounts hält er trotzdem aktiv – auch weil er gesehen hat, wie aufgegebene linke Accounts übernommen und von anderen genutzt wurden, die sich als deren frühere Besitzer ausgaben. “There’s a practical reason and a sinister reason for that.”
Middleton ist ähnlich zurückhaltend, wenn es darum geht, den veränderten Klang der Musik zu zerdenken. Er beschreibt ihren üblichen Prozess: Moffat schickt ihm Drums und Samples; Middleton schickt Gitarren und Klaviere zurück. Die Teile wandern so lange hin und her, bis daraus Songs werden – oder eben nicht. Mit vierzehn Tracks, sagt er, habe Half-Told Tales eine gute Mischung. “Loud, quiet, slow, fast. That’s all you need for music, isn’t it?” Moffat beginnt zu kichern. “Loud, quiet, slow, fast, yeah.”
“It’s easier doing it myself”
Ich frage Middleton, ob die Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Musikern während der Jahre, in denen Arab Strap getrennt waren, verändert hat, wie er heute mit Moffat arbeitet.
“Yeah, it’s made me realise it’s easier doing it myself. I don’t have to argue and compromise. If you’re on your own too long, working remotely in music, you sometimes don’t have a foil or a positive influence on you. Like, tell you actually, you know, that’s a bit indulgent or shit.”
Middleton hatte Half-Told Tales zuvor als ein Album beschrieben, das er unter anderem deshalb mag, weil es nicht unbedingt die Platte ist, die er selbst gemacht hätte. “That’s the beauty of being in a band.” Vielleicht hilft es, dass sie nur zu zweit sind: Moffat sagt, fast jede Zusammenarbeit, an der sie beide beteiligt waren, sei eins zu eins gewesen. “I think democracy amongst five people must be absolute hell.”
Belegen sie die Ideen des jeweils anderen manchmal mit einem Veto? Middleton denkt an die Musik, die er Moffat im Lauf der Jahre geschickt hat. “There’s definitely stuff I’ve sent Aidan which I have to be like, thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is the best guitar thing I’ve ever written.’ And nine years later, it’s not being used yet. It might not be he doesn’t like it. It might just be like, he’s not found the words to go with it yet.”
Moffat widerspricht sofort. “I like everything you’ve sent. It’s just sometimes I can’t find a way into it.” Und manchmal passiert das Gegenteil: Middleton schickt ein vollständig ausgearbeitetes Stück mit Strophen, Refrains und dem, was er “change-y bits” nennt, obwohl er selbst gar nicht besonders davon überzeugt ist. Es wird ein Arab-Strap-Song. “The collaboration and creativity comes into its own unique little thing,” sagt Middleton.
Fighting For You
Die Welt außerhalb des Studios ist auf Half-Told Tales keineswegs abwesend. Fighting For You, You You You, Be A Man und Glamour Magick nehmen sich verschiedene Aspekte des Moments vor, in dem das Album entstand: politische Nostalgie und Verbitterung, das Bedürfnis nach Gemeinschaft, Männlichkeit, Altern, Reichtum und Menschen, die Angst ausnutzen.
In Fighting For You richtet Moffat den Blick auf diejenigen, die von Spaltung profitieren. Es gibt eine Verbindung zu Turn Off The Light, dem letzten Track des vorherigen Albums, der einer Person, die in die Welt der Verschwörungstheorien abrutscht, mit bemerkenswerter Empathie begegnete. “I have nothing but sympathy for the people who are victims of these people,” sagt Moffat. Er kennt Menschen, die in diese Welt hineingeraten sind, und erinnert sich an die Pandemie als eine Zeit, in der viele verletzlich waren und verzweifelt nach Antworten suchten. Für diejenigen, die das ausnutzen, reicht seine Sympathie nicht: “The people who control these things, I’ve got no sympathy or empathy for them.”
Im Zentrum von Fighting For You steht die Fantasie eines verlorenen goldenen Zeitalters. Moffat erinnert sich an jene Thatcher-Jahre, die heute ganz anders romantisiert werden.
“I feel like I’ve re-lived my youth again with the constant threat of war. No one’s got a job, and there’s just no money, and everyone’s struggling to pay for things. I mean, it’s like the 80s all over again.”
Middleton wirft ein: “The 80s were great. There were still lots of good things as well.” Moffat räumt den Punkt ein – irgendwie: “I tell you what was great about the 80s: the alternative comedy scene that was on the telly all the time, taking the government to account.”
Politisches Songwriting betrachtet er allerdings nicht als Verpflichtung. “It’s just hard to avoid.” Sein eigenes Leben, sagt er, biete nicht mehr denselben Vorrat an Stoff wie früher. “My personal life isn’t that interesting. I’m a middle-aged dad with two children, and it’s not that exciting.” Dahinter steckt aber noch eine andere Sorge. “I don’t want it to be overtly political. I don’t want to date it too much.”
You You You etwa enthält politische Gedanken, beginnt aber an einem viel intimeren Punkt: bei der Erfahrung, einen anderen Menschen zu haben, auf den man sich verlassen kann. Von dort aus, sagt Moffat, öffnet sich der Song hin zur Idee von Gemeinschaft.
Middleton nähert sich dem Thema aus einer anderen Richtung. Er macht sich Gedanken darüber, dass Arab Strap zu politisch werden könnten, wenn ohnehin schon so viel Spaltung herrscht, und erinnert sich an jemanden auf Twitter, der sich selbst als konservativ bezeichnete, Annahmen über Middletons Politik machte und zugleich ausdrücklich betonte, dass er seine Platten trotzdem kaufe. “People can have bad political opinions, but still be into good music.” Er findet nicht, dass Musik Menschen wegen ihrer Politik die Tür vor der Nase zuschlagen sollte: Ansichten können sich ändern, argumentiert er; Menschen könnten “wise up when they get older”, sich besser bilden und “a better way of thinking” finden.
Moffat lacht darüber: “This is becoming totalitarianism now.” Middleton: “No, I knew you’d say that.”
Können Songs missverstanden werden oder ist es einfach im Wesen, dass jeder Hörer sich den Song so zu eigen macht, wie er ihn versteht? “Are folk going to take Fighting For You as an anthem for the far right, because they think it’s naming all the things they like?” Er macht eine Pause. “You never know. People are stupid. They could take a soundbite of the bit they like.”
Moffats Antwort darauf ist, die Songs in seinen eigenen Gefühlen zu verankern, statt Anweisungen zu erteilen. “I’m not shouting at other people and telling them they’re wrong. I’m just discussing my feelings.”
Boys need love
Diese Überschneidung von Persönlichem und Politischem wird auf Be A Man besonders berührend. Darin nimmt Moffat die Manosphere ins Visier und schreibt zugleich aus der Perspektive eines Vaters über Männlichkeit.
Eine Zeile – “and boys need love and I should know” – ließ mich aufhorchen. Als Vater eines kleinen Sohnes sage ich Moffat, wie sehr mich diese Zeile getroffen hat, und frage ihn, ob es schwierig war, sie zu schreiben.
“It wasn’t hard to write,” sagt er. “It was difficult to let my son hear it.” Sein Sohn reagierte mit Lachen auf den Verweis des Songs auf die Manosphere und auf eine Person, die Moffat bewusst nicht beim Namen nennt. Jemand anderes reagierte anders. “That also made his mum cry, which I’m very proud of.” Eine Pause. “But she cries all the time anyway.”
Als ich sage Middleton sage, dass die Klaviermelodie des Songs für mich Kindheit heraufbeschwört, und frage, ob er beim Schreiben vom gleichen emotionalen Ort kommt, widerspricht er: “The music was written without knowing what the song’s about, and I sent Aidan a lovely guitar piece, and I put that last-minute throwaway piano thing, and Aidan went with that and threw away the guitar.”
The third element
Inzwischen fühlt es sich beim Interview mit Moffat und Middleton, die aus ihren getrennten Wohnungen zugeschaltet sind, ein wenig so an, als dürfte man eine Miniaturversion des kreativen Prozesses von Arab Strap beobachten. Das Gespräch fliegt zwischen Glasgow und Anstruther hin und her, ganz ähnlich wie ihre Musik.
Moffat folgt einer Frage, wohin auch immer sie ihn führt; Middleton neigt eher dazu, die Prämisse infrage zu stellen, Moffat zu widersprechen oder gelegentlich selbst die Fragen zu stellen.
Als wir auf Ampersand kommen, Middletons Lieblingssong auf Half-Told Tales, liefert er mir die Formulierung, die das besser zu erklären scheint als alles andere. “I like the tune, I like the words, I like the way Aidan sings it.” Dann: “It’s got that third element between the two of us.”
Der zweite Akt ihrer Karriere ist auch von der Weigerung geprägt, den ersten nachzuahmen. “Let’s not try and sound like we used to,” sagt Middleton. “That’s not what we’re trying to do.” Und doch fängt Ampersand etwas von den Arab Strap vergangener Jahrzehnte ein, ohne es bewusst nachzubauen.
“Is that sarcasm?”
Ihre jüngsten Musikvideos liefern ein weniger tiefgründiges Beispiel für dieselbe Chemie. Ich sage Middleton, dass er – entgegen der üblichen Klage von Musikern über Videodrehs – darin aussieht, als hätte er wirklich Spaß. “Is that sarcasm?” Moffat bricht in Gelächter aus.
Middleton räumt ein, dass ihre jüngeren Ichs in dieser Frage vielleicht falsch lagen. “I wish we’d done that years ago. We were like, ‘We don’t want to be in videos, let’s not do this, we’re not about that, we’re about the music, man.’” Heute haben sie Spaß daran; nur schade, dass es kein MTV mehr gibt, um die Videos zu zeigen. “Even like two o’clock in the morning on MTV2 would have been great for these ones.”
Der Vorteil von Videos für Moffat zudem: Ihr Label verlangt ständig nach mehr Social-Media-Content, und ein richtiges Video liefert immerhin Clips, ohne dass einer von ihnen direkt in ein Handy sprechen muss, worauf keiner Lust hat. “You should do it. You’d be great,” stichelt Middleton. Moffat gibt es sofort zurück: “No, you should do it. You’d be great.”
“I don’t want to live forever”
Eines dieser Videos gehört zu Glamour Magick, einem Song, der Half-Told Tales noch tiefer in seine Beschäftigung mit Altern und Sterblichkeit führt. Ich frage Moffat nach Bryan Johnson, dem amerikanischen Biohacker, dessen enorm kostspielige Versuche, dem Altern zu widerstehen, ihn zu einem Symbol für den buchstäblichen Krieg des Silicon Valley gegen den Tod gemacht haben.
Johnson war tatsächlich eine Inspiration. “It’s such a strange thing to do,” sagt Moffat. “It’s such an arrogance to do it as well, assuming that any of us have the right to live forever is bizarre, I think.” Er fügt hinzu – wie sich herausstellt, fälschlicherweise –, Johnson liege im Sterben; Johnson hat öffentlich über seine Diagnose einer Autoimmungastritis gesprochen, aber nicht gesagt, dass er unheilbar krank sei.
Middleton nimmt die Behauptung zunächst für bare Münze. “He’s dying?” “Yeah.” “Only him?” Moffat hält kurz inne. “Well, no, I mean, many people are dying.”
“Everyone’s got a right to want to live forever, or they’ve got a right to try. It’s not, they’ve got a human right to try, but it’s a sign of immaturity”, doch Moffat ist nicht völlig überzeugt: “I don’t know.” Sein Einwand ist ein anderer: “I feel there’s a sort of arrogance in the idea that you can, especially the people who are doing it, who are the richest people on earth, that they have some right to live forever.” Johnson hat betont, seine Erkenntnisse öffentlich zugänglich zu machen, doch Moffat weist auf die offensichtliche Einschränkung hin: “You have to be a millionaire to live like that.” Middleton, trocken wie immer: “Go for it.” Moffat: “I don’t want to live forever.”
Half-told tales
Sterblichkeit liegt schwer über dem letzten Teil des Albums. Die beiden abschließenden Tracks Fragments und Beats Per Minute scheinen sich mit dem Altern, dem Unvollendeten und der Frage zu beschäftigen, wie man die verbleibende Zeit nutzt. Der Albumtitel selbst stammt aus Fragments, einem Song über Leben, die enden, bevor ihre Geschichten vollständig erzählt werden können. Damit ist Half-Told Tales ein seltsam passender Titel für ein Jubiläumsalbum einer Band, die bereits einmal aufgehört hat zu existieren.
Die erste Inkarnation von Arab Strap endete mit The Last Romance. Dessen letzter Track war There Is No Ending. Als ich beginne, sie daran zu erinnern, unterbricht Moffat: “Are you going to ask us to split up now?” Auf keinen Fall, sage ich, und er lacht.
Was ich eigentlich wissen möchte: Ob Fragments und die Idee halb erzählter Geschichten ein Gefühl widerspiegeln, dass die Wiedervereinigung ihnen erlaubt habe, etwas Unvollendetes zu Ende zu bringen. Moffat wehrt sich gegen die Prämisse. “I don’t think either of us like the idea that we need to do these things.” Ihre Rückkehr, sagt er, sei weit weniger pathetisch gewesen: Die Reunion-Shows 2016 liefen gut, und während der Jahre dazwischen hatten sie bereits mit gemeinsamer Musik experimentiert, nachdem sie für einen Filmsoundtrack angefragt worden waren. Irgendwann beschlossen sie, es wieder richtig mit neuer Arab-Strap-Musik zu versuchen. Eines der ersten Ergebnisse war The Turning of Our Bones. Ganz einfach: Sie liebten den Song, also machten sie weiter.
Dann sagt Middleton, beinahe nebenbei, etwas, womit ich nicht gerechnet hatte. “We still don’t have that definitive Arab Strap song. That’s kind of been eluding us.”
Moffat widerspricht nicht. “Well, yeah. We might try that next.”
Tatsächlich gibt es bereits einen weiteren Song, der es nicht auf Half-Told Tales geschafft hat, den aber beide mögen und der vielleicht Teil einer EP werden könnte. Es gibt nur eine Komplikation: Er ist ungefähr acht Minuten lang. Moffat klingt darüber ausgesprochen erfreut. “I quite like the idea of doing this one big epic that no-one’s ever going to put on the radio. And it will be really catchy as well.”
“Wait a minute, we can do what we want”
Sogar die Länge von Half-Told Tales entstand daraus, dass die beiden eine weitere willkürliche Regel entdeckten, an die sie sich eigentlich längst nicht mehr halten mussten. Ursprünglich wollten sie zehn Songs. Dann zwölf. Schließlich merkten sie, dass sie sich überhaupt nicht entscheiden konnten, was sie weglassen sollten, und packten alle vierzehn aufs Album. Moffats Logik: Wer heute noch ein Album hören will, wird es hören; alle anderen suchen sich ohnehin ein paar Songs heraus oder bauen Playlists. “It doesn’t make any difference whatsoever.”
Und dann war da noch der Titel. Wenn die Platte Half-Told Tales heißt, warum sollte man dann absichtlich einige der Geschichten zurücklassen? Middleton beschreibt die Entscheidung schließlich als befreiend. “We’re restricted by our own invisible walls. Wait a minute, we can do what we want.”
Die zusätzlichen Songs verlängerten das Album nur um ein paar Minuten. Die Hörer können sie im Shuffle hören, Favoriten auswählen, in Playlists packen oder ignorieren. “I feel happy with it,” sagt Middleton. “That’s all.”
Einen Plan allerdings machen Moffat und Middleton immer wieder.
Sie versprechen einander regelmäßig, dass das nächste Arab-Strap-Album endlich anders wird.
“A nice, quiet, chilled-out album,” sagt Middleton.
Etwas Reduziertes.
Und dann beginnt der Prozess von vorn: Ein Demo verlässt Anstruther, etwas kommt aus Glasgow zurück. Eine Idee wird hinzugefügt. Der andere hört etwas, das eigentlich nie wichtig sein sollte. Irgendwo auf dem Weg zwischen den beiden taucht dieses dritte Element auf.
Das ruhige Album verschwindet.
“Why not?” sagt Middleton. “We’re still young. We can still make live music and perform it.”
Moffat lacht.
“Maybe it is a sort of mid-life thing. It’s like, well, let’s make noise while we still can. The quiet years can come later.”
Middleton denkt kurz darüber nach.
“Well, we’re noisier now than we ever were.”
(Interview: Danny McBride)
Half-Told Tales ist am 4. September 2026 bei Rock Action Records erschienen.
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Arab Strap: “We still don’t have that definitive Arab Strap song”
Thirty years after forming in Falkirk, Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton are still arguing, laughing and sending music backwards and forwards across Scotland. On new album Half-Told Tales, Arab Strap look at masculinity, politics, mortality and why the quiet years can wait.
There is a moment during my conversation with Arab Strap when Malcolm Middleton appears to forget who is conducting the interview.
We are talking about Falkirk, the town in Scotland’s Central Belt where Middleton and Moffat grew up and where Arab Strap began in the mid-1990s. Neither lives there now. Moffat is speaking from his home in Glasgow; Middleton is in Anstruther, a small fishing town on the Fife coast. Both still return to Falkirk for family.
“I think it’s a hard one, our relationship with Falkirk,” Middleton says. “I think it’s important. We grew up there, and we’re from there.”
“It’s inside us, I guess. You can take the boy out of Falkirk, but you can’t take Falkirk out of the boy.”
Then, mid-thought, he turns the question on his bandmate: “Do you feel like it calls you back, Aidan? Dollar Park?” Then he catches himself. “Why am I asking the question?”
Moffat laughs and answers anyway. The previous day he had driven around Falkirk with his mother and brother, passing old houses and familiar places. “I think it’s definitely part of it.”
Dollar Park, one of several songs on Half-Told Tales that looks back towards youth and the places the authors came from, isn’t necessarily about Falkirk itself, though there was another reason for choosing it. “It was either that or Callendar Park, but Callendar Park doesn’t sound as good as Dollar Park.”
Under Offer, too, looks back towards Moffat’s past, this time through the horror of seeing what later owners have done to his childhood home. Moffat spent his entire youth in Falkirk. “I didn’t leave Falkirk until I was 25 or something like that. Aye, so it is a big part of me.”
Falkirk sits between Glasgow and Edinburgh: close enough for gigs in either city, but far enough away not to belong to either scene. “There was only about 100 of us,” Moffat remembers of the local indie scene. “And we weren’t all friends.”
I suggest that if they’d grown up in a bigger city, it might have been harder to find each other. Middleton deadpans: “That’s correct, but there could have been even better things.” Moffat laughs again.
The First Big Weekend
Arab Strap arrived in the mid-1990s sounding unlike anyone else. Moffat’s conversational, unmistakably Scottish voice told stories about sex, relationships, drinking, male fragility, loneliness and all the embarrassing details songwriters usually edit out. Middleton supplied music that could be skeletal and intimate one moment and richly textured the next.
Their breakthrough single, The First Big Weekend, appeared in 1996: an account of a normal weekend in Falkirk that captures both the nihilism and innocence of youth. Despite its very specific setting, it felt strangely universal.
Six albums followed before Arab Strap split in 2006. When they reunited for live shows ten years later, they could easily have settled into life as a legacy act, a cult Scottish band with a substantial catalogue and an audience happy to hear it again. Instead, a few years later they started making records again. Half-Told Tales is their third album since returning and ninth overall, arriving around the band’s 30th anniversary, and neither man seems interested in trading on nostalgia.
Their acclaimed 1998 album Philophobia has already received the 25th-anniversary tour treatment. “We talked about just doing our anniversary stuff,” Moffat says. “We were planning to focus on that more, but at a time when we’d just reformed to make new records, it just seemed like a step backwards. So why not focus on that rather than celebrate these old songs and then have to play them on tour? Over and over again.”
I mention seeing them perform Philophobia at St Luke’s in Glasgow, where I remember them suggesting that some of those songs might subsequently be retired. Middleton remembers the promise rather more dramatically: “In other words we said, ‘We’re never going to play anything from that record ever again.’”
They’re rehearsing some of them now. “We’ll never go back on what we say,” Middleton deadpans. Moffat points out the bigger irony: “We also split up in 2006.”
Loud, quiet, slow, fast
Half-Told Tales remains recognisably Arab Strap: bruised, funny, intimate, occasionally unsettling and capable of moving from tenderness to enormous noise. Yet something about it feels much more optimistic than its predecessor, 2024’s magnificently titled I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍.
Moffat insists this wasn’t planned. “It was a subconscious thing that sort of revealed itself as we went along, which is always how the lyrics work. I don’t really plan it out. We’re not this sort of band that make plans. We don’t have meetings and discussions.”
Moffat has also largely stepped back from the social-media immersion that shaped much of the previous album. “I’m totally fine with it, there’s a lot of stuff about social media, and I kind of heeded my own words. It turns out that you can be a lot more positive about the world when you’re not embroiled in that sort of shit.” He still keeps his old accounts active, though, partly because he’s seen abandoned left-leaning accounts taken over and used by people impersonating their previous owners. “There’s a practical reason and a sinister reason for that.”
Middleton is similarly reluctant to overthink why the music feels different. He describes their usual process: Moffat sends him drums and samples; Middleton sends back guitars and pianos. They fire the pieces backwards and forwards until they either become songs or they don’t. With fourteen tracks, he says, Half-Told Tales has a good mix. “Loud, quiet, slow, fast. That’s all you need for music, isn’t it?” Moffat starts giggling. “Loud, quiet, slow, fast, yeah.”
“It’s easier doing it myself”
I ask Middleton whether working with other musicians during Arab Strap’s years apart changed the way he collaborates with Moffat.
“Yeah, it’s made me realise it’s easier doing it myself. I don’t have to argue and compromise. If you’re on your own too long, working remotely in music, you sometimes don’t have a foil or a positive influence on you. Like, tell you actually, you know, that’s a bit indulgent or shit.”
Middleton had previously described Half-Told Tales as an album he liked partly because it wasn’t necessarily the record he himself would have made. “That’s the beauty of being in a band.” Perhaps it helps that there are only two of them: Moffat says almost every collaboration they’ve both been involved in has been one-on-one. “I think democracy amongst five people must be absolute hell.”
I ask whether they ever veto each other’s ideas. Middleton thinks about the music he’s sent Moffat over the years. “There’s definitely stuff I’ve sent Aidan which I have to be like, thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is the best guitar thing I’ve ever written.’ And nine years later, it’s not being used yet. It might not be he doesn’t like it. It might just be like, he’s not found the words to go with it yet.”
Moffat pushes back straight away. “I like everything you’ve sent. It’s just sometimes I can’t find a way into it.” And sometimes the opposite happens: Middleton sends over a fully formed piece with verses, choruses and what he calls “change-y bits,” despite not being especially keen on it himself. It becomes an Arab Strap song. “The collaboration and creativity comes into its own unique little thing,” Middleton says.
Fighting For You
The world outside the studio is hardly absent from Half-Told Tales. Fighting For You, You You You, Be A Man and Glamour Magick all pick away at different aspects of the moment in which the album was made: political nostalgia and grievance, the need for community, masculinity, ageing, wealth and people exploiting fear.
On Fighting For You, Moffat turns towards the people who profit from division. There’s a connection here with Turn Off The Light, the closing track on the previous album, which approached somebody slipping into conspiracy culture with considerable empathy. “I have nothing but sympathy for the people who are victims of these people,” Moffat says. He knows people who became caught up in that world and remembers the pandemic as a time when many were vulnerable and desperate for answers. His sympathy doesn’t extend to those exploiting them: “The people who control these things, I’ve got no sympathy or empathy for them.”
At the heart of Fighting For You lies the fantasy of a lost golden age. Moffat remembers that Thatcherite period now being romanticised rather differently. “I feel like I’ve re-lived my youth again with the constant threat of war. No one’s got a job, and there’s just no money, and everyone’s struggling to pay for things. I mean, it’s like the 80s all over again.”
Middleton interjects. “The 80s were great. There were still lots of good things as well.” Moffat concedes the point, sort of: “I tell you what was great about the 80s: the alternative comedy scene that was on the telly all the time, taking the government to account.”
He doesn’t regard political songwriting as a responsibility, though. “It’s just hard to avoid.” His own life, he says, no longer offers the same reservoir of material it once did. “My personal life isn’t that interesting. I’m a middle-aged dad with two children, and it’s not that exciting.” But there’s another concern behind that. “I don’t want it to be overtly political. I don’t want to date it too much.”
You You You, for example, contains political ideas but starts somewhere much more intimate: with having another person to rely upon. From there, Moffat says, it opens into the idea of community.
Middleton comes at the issue from another direction. He worries about Arab Strap becoming too political when there’s already so much division around, and remembers someone on Twitter describing himself as conservative and making assumptions about Middleton’s politics, while also making a point of saying he still bought his records. “People can have bad political opinions, but still be into good music.” He doesn’t think music should shut its doors to people because of their politics: views can change, he argues; people might “wise up when they get older,” become better educated and find “a better way of thinking.”
Moffat laughs at that: “This is becoming totalitarianism now.” Middleton: “No, I knew you’d say that.”
Still, once a song leaves the people who made it, they lose control over who thinks it belongs to them. “Are folk going to take Fighting For You as an anthem for the far right, because they think it’s naming all the things they like?” He pauses. “You never know. People are stupid. They could take a soundbite of the bit they like.”
Moffat’s answer is to keep the songs rooted in his own feelings rather than instruction. “I’m not shouting at other people and telling them they’re wrong. I’m just discussing my feelings.”
Boys need love
That overlap between the personal and political becomes particularly affecting on Be A Man, in which Moffat takes aim at the manosphere while writing about masculinity from the perspective of a father.
One line, “and boys need love and I should know,” stopped me in my tracks. As the father of a young son myself, I tell Moffat the line really hit me and ask whether it was difficult to write.
“It wasn’t hard to write,” he says. “It was difficult to let my son hear it.” His son responded by laughing at the song’s reference to the manosphere, and to a figure Moffat deliberately leaves unnamed. Someone else reacted differently. “That also made his mum cry, which I’m very proud of.” A pause. “But she cries all the time anyway.”
I tell Middleton the song’s piano melody seems to evoke childhood and ask whether he was coming from the same emotional place when he wrote it. He shuts down my premise. “The music was written without knowing what the song’s about, and I sent Aidan a lovely guitar piece, and I put that last-minute throwaway piano thing, and Aidan went with that and threw away the guitar.”
The third element
By this point, interviewing Moffat and Middleton from their separate homes has begun to feel like being allowed to watch a miniature version of Arab Strap’s creative process. The conversation flies backwards and forwards between Glasgow and Anstruther much like the music itself.
Moffat follows a question wherever it leads; Middleton is more inclined to challenge the premise, challenge Moffat, or occasionally start asking the questions himself.
When we get onto Ampersand, Middleton’s favourite song on Half-Told Tales, he gives me the phrase that seems to explain it better than anything else. “I like the tune, I like the words, I like the way Aidan sings it.” Then: “It’s got that third element between the two of us.”
Their second act has been defined partly by refusing to imitate their first. “Let’s not try and sound like we used to,” Middleton says. “That’s not what we’re trying to do.” Yet Ampersand captures something of the Arab Strap of decades ago without deliberately trying to recreate it.
“Is that sarcasm?”
Their recent music videos offer a less profound example of the same chemistry. I tell Middleton that, contrary to the usual musician’s complaint about video shoots, he looks as though he’s genuinely enjoying himself in them. “Is that sarcasm?” Moffat bursts out laughing.
Middleton admits their younger selves may have got this one wrong. “I wish we’d done that years ago. We were like, ‘We don’t want to be in videos, let’s not do this, we’re not about that, we’re about the music, man.’” Now they’re having fun; his only regret is that MTV isn’t around to show them. “Even like two o’clock in the morning on MTV2 would have been great for these ones.”
Moffat points out a more practical advantage: their label constantly wants more social-media content, and a proper video at least produces clips without either of them having to talk directly into a phone. Neither wants to do that. “You should do it. You’d be great,” Middleton quips. Moffat throws it straight back: “No, you should do it. You’d be great.”
“I don’t want to live forever”
One of those videos accompanies Glamour Magick, a song that takes Half-Told Tales further into its concern with ageing and mortality. I ask Moffat about Bryan Johnson, the American biohacker whose enormously expensive attempts to resist ageing have made him a symbol of Silicon Valley’s literal war against death.
Johnson was indeed one inspiration. “It’s such a strange thing to do,” Moffat says. “It’s such an arrogance to do it as well, assuming that any of us have the right to live forever is bizarre, I think.” He adds, inaccurately as it turns out, that Johnson is dying; Johnson has in fact spoken publicly about being diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis, but has not said he’s terminally ill.
Middleton takes the claim at face value. “He’s dying?” “Yeah.” “Only him?” Moffat pauses. “Well, no, I mean, many people are dying.”
Middleton doesn’t entirely agree. “Everyone’s got a right to want to live forever, or they’ve got a right to try. It’s not, they’ve got a human right to try, but it’s a sign of immaturity.” Moffat isn’t entirely convinced. “I don’t know.” His objection is different: “I feel there’s a sort of arrogance in the idea that you can, especially the people who are doing it, who are the richest people on earth, that they have some right to live forever.” Johnson has emphasised making his findings publicly available, but Moffat points to the obvious limitation: “You have to be a millionaire to live like that.” Middleton, dry as ever: “Go for it.” Moffat: “I don’t want to live forever.”
Half-told tales
Mortality hangs heavily over the latter part of the album. The final two tracks, Fragments and Beats Per Minute, both seem to look towards ageing, what remains unfinished and making the most of the time that’s left. The album title itself comes from Fragments, a song that invokes lives ending before their stories can be fully told, which makes Half-Told Tales an oddly fitting title for an anniversary record by a band that has already ended once.
Arab Strap’s first incarnation concluded with The Last Romance. Its final track was There Is No Ending. When I begin reminding them of this, Moffat interrupts: “Are you going to ask us to split up now?” Absolutely not, I say, and he laughs.
What I actually want to know is whether Fragments, and the idea of tales left half-told, reflects a feeling that reforming allowed them to complete something unfinished. Moffat resists the premise. “I don’t think either of us like the idea that we need to do these things.” Their return, he says, was much less grand than that: the reunion shows in 2016 went well, and during their years apart they’d already experimented with making music together after being approached about a film soundtrack. Eventually they decided to try making new Arab Strap music properly. One of the first results was The Turning of Our Bones. Simply put, they loved it, so they carried on.
Then, almost as an aside, Middleton says something I wasn’t expecting. “We still don’t have that definitive Arab Strap song. That’s kind of been eluding us.”
Moffat doesn’t disagree. “Well, yeah. We might try that next.”
In fact, there’s already another song, one that didn’t make Half-Told Tales, but that both men like and suggest might become part of an EP. There is one complication: it’s around eight minutes long. Moffat sounds delighted by that. “I quite like the idea of doing this one big epic that no-one’s ever going to put on the radio. And it will be really catchy as well.”
“Wait a minute, we can do what we want”
Even the length of Half-Told Tales resulted from the pair discovering another arbitrary rule they no longer had much reason to obey. They originally aimed for ten songs. Then twelve. Eventually they realised they couldn’t decide what to leave off at all, so they put all fourteen on the album. At this point, Moffat reasons, people who still want to listen to an album will listen to it; everyone else will pick a couple of songs or make playlists anyway. “It doesn’t make any difference whatsoever.”
And there was the title. If the record was Half-Told Tales, why deliberately leave some of the tales behind? Middleton describes the eventual decision as liberating. “We’re restricted by our own invisible walls. Wait a minute, we can do what we want.”
The extra songs added only a few minutes. Listeners can shuffle them, choose favourites, put them on playlists or ignore them. “I feel happy with it,” Middleton says. “That’s all.”
There is, however, one plan Moffat and Middleton keep making.
They repeatedly promise one another that the next Arab Strap album will finally be different.
“A nice, quiet, chilled-out album,” Middleton says.
Something stripped back.
And then the process starts again, a demo leaves Anstruther and something comes back from Glasgow. An idea gets added. The other person hears something that was never supposed to matter. Somewhere in the journey between the two of them, that third element appears.
The quiet album disappears.
“Why not?” Middleton says. “We’re still young. We can still make live music and perform it.”
Moffat laughs.
“Maybe it is a sort of mid-life thing. It’s like, well, let’s make noise while we still can. The quiet years can come later.”
Middleton considers this.
“Well, we’re noisier now than we ever were.”
Half-Told Tales is released by Rock Action Records on 4 September 2026.
