It's no surprise that both halves of Glasgow duo Arab Strap have
fronted with their debut solo records at almost exactly the same
moment, such quaint release-sheet coincidence doing little to dispel
the conception of the Scottish lads as being a symbiotic musical
union. Aidan Moffat, under the nom de disque Lucky Pierre, has
tried his best to escape the shadow cast by Arab Strap with his
debut, while Middleton stays pretty close to the blueprint of the
band.
There's two ways you can see Aidan Moffat's debut Lucky Pierre
longplayer: As either a great success, or a profound disappointment.
And the way you see the album depends on the way you look at it,
whether you look at it for what it is, or what it's not. What it is
is an attempt to give a kick in the ass of the smug scene of
soft-beat comedown cockheads, mixing beats and strings to chill-room
effect; what it's not is a debut solo album for Arab Strap's Aidan
Moffat that sounds anything like Arab Strap's Aidan Moffat. As gruff,
slovenly, chick-dicking, beer-drinking, diary-keeping lyricist,
Moffat has come off as some pop-music Bukowski, telling tales from
the lint-in-the-belly-button of the underbelly of society in the
thickest Scottish accent heard this side of Ratcatcher. On their best
record, Philophobia, the band were famously credited as:
Malcolm Middleton — most things musical; Aidan Moffat —
most things not. And, so it's not really a surprise that Moffat, as
Lucky Pierre, has taken the one-man-band freedom to explore his
largely-dormant musical side, totally distancing this musical persona
from his other music persona by putting down the microphone. Which
is, of course, where the disappointment will come for fans of the
Strap hoping to hear more of the same. However, if you look at it as
what Moffat intended it to be, a comedown record to help him get to
sleep, Hypnogogia is a great success. Moffat brings the rare
air of a non-dance, non-cocksucking, actually-artistic approach to
the world of the comedown; and his mixture of blunted beats, baroque
percussion, and grand swipes of crackling symphonic strings is
infused with the kind of substance that this neo-genre is almost
entirely without. "The Heart of All That Is" is the height of the
album's fashion, drawing together grand orchestral threads and
weaving them together into a dazzling postmodernist garment; ornate
dabs of pizzicato strings paint some well-dressed outing in a meadow
littered with blossoms blown in the breeze, or something. But, by
song's end, Moffat shows himself to be quite the cobbling-together
gonzo, finishing off with an extended duet between a string quartet
and a vicious charge of static, such a salvo showing he's got at
least one Third Eye Foundation record in his collection.
While his vocalist has gone wandering off into some foreign musical
field, in the case of Middleton, the guy who makes the music in Arab
Strap, the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. In fact, there are
numerous moments on the ludicrously-titled 5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull
Alcohol John Nicotine that could easily pass as actually being by
Arab Strap. Helped out by members of The Delgados and Mogwai, plus
his old pal Aidan, the music features Middleton's familiar
folkie-esque mournful acoustic guitar, with liberal layers of
keyboards and piano, and moments of drumming, looped-guitar, beats,
and even some weeping violin. Being so similar to his main musical
gig, what this debut solo album really represents is Middleton's
debut as vocalist. Keeping his singing largely to a hesitant murmur,
replete with the heavy Scottish accent, Middleton's first vocal foray
finds him wearing his heart on his sleeve without impunity.
Invariably, the lyrics lack Moffat's savage wit, but they more than
match him in turns of miserablism. "Cold Winter" features the glum
sob "Behind everything I do, stares the cold truth I don't have you";
"Speed on the M9" falls back on the mantra "I'm so lonely"; and
"Devil and the Angel" gets self-reflexive with the words of a
"devil": "You'll never amount to anything, you'll never achieve
anything, you'll never be good at anything, and your songs are
shite." The latter lyric seem rather like he's fishing for
validation, at the least, if not contradictory compliments.
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