ARAB STRAP
Obituary
Ten years ago. a keen young List reporter grabbed the first ever interview with Arab Strap. Now that the Falkirk duo are
left for me by Arab Strap’s Malcolm Middleton. ‘One of us looks a bit like Chris Evans, the other looks like, em, Tony Slattery.’ As a means of setting up a face-to- face interview with people I’ve never seen before, the advice proves helpful in its own 'way. Two days later I’m on a bus heading towards Falkirk to meet the men from Arab Strap in what proves to be a world exclusive (as the tabloids who were soon to get their teeth into them might boast). The people from a shortlived London style magazine Blah Blah Blah were due to have met up with Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton a few days earlier, but for whatever reason (each side blamed the other for the mix-up) it never happened.
I feel nervous and excited while weighed down by a bout of confusion. Arab, Strap are soon to appear at Glasgow music festival Ten Day Weekend; their imminent first album will be called The Week Never Starts Around Here and their debut single is called ‘The First Big Weekend’. Not having heard the song, all l have to go on is that it’s crassly described as ‘the musical equivalent of Irvine Welsh’ and makes reference to The
14 THE LIST 30 Nov—14 Dec 2006
I t’s September 1996. A message is being
Simpsons and the England defeat of Scotland in Euro 96. I’m told that the lads themselves are fond of their beer and their women. John Peel has become an admirer. Steve Lamacq will follow suit. And before long the marketing folk at Guinness will help keep the lads in beer money by buying a piece of ‘The First Big Weekend’ for one of their monochromatic head-scratching ads.
lt’s September 2006. A message appears on the band’s official website. ‘Yes, it’s the end for Arab Strap. After ten years, six studio albums, three live albums and all manner of everything else, we ’ve decided the story should come to a close. There ’3 no animosity, no drama, we simply feel we ’ve run our course and The Last Romance seems to us the most logical final act of the Arab Strap studio adventure. Everybody likes a happy ending.” _
As | get off the bus at Falkirk (yes, it’s slightly raining) two men who could be described as mild doppelgangers to the aforementioned ginger DJ and ad-libbing depressive approach and politely, hungoverly, introduce themselves. Five hours later we have supped coffee in a greasy spoon café and sipped alcohol in
local pub Behind the Wall and the key thing I’ve learned is that Malcolm’s gran would have far preferred the band to be called Central Belt. In between the coffee and the alcohol, I have taken some Polaroid snaps of the pair (see overleaf) as publicity shots are non-existent.
Some months later when proper pictures of Arab Strap are circulated to the press by their PR company, one of my horribly amateurish photos surfaces in a rival publication, plucked covertly from The List’s secret archive by a desperate hack. Word has it that the pair are not best pleased. When I interview Malcolm in 1999 for the release of their third album Elephant Shoe, I am able to set the record straight and considering that quite a lot has happened to the band in three years, it’s easy enough for Malcolm to accept my alibi. He goes on to tell me that ‘elephant shoe’ is what Falkirk’s bairns would mouth across a crowded classroom to the one they fancied because it would look exactly like ‘I love you’. Despite the clever-for—five-seconds description of them as ‘arch miserablists’, trUndled out for each passing album, Moffat and Middleton are actually far closer to