Aidan Moffat's gonna flog this Bukowski-of-rock shtick 'til he drops,
such flagellation being part of a preened package of writerly/rockist
degradation he's honed over so many years and so many beers. His glum
tales of getting-loaded and chasing-birds long leered out over Arab
Strap's trademark pretty-acoustic-guitar/crappy-drum-machine sound.
Charting tales of dubious debauchery and emotional emptiness, Moffat
— so the shtick goes — is one part princely poet, one part
lecherous dick, his preoccupation with said semen-secreting bodily
organ making him one hell of a sex-centric sad-sack. Like: Arab Strap
records are full of sex, but totally sexless. To go with the
gruff-Scots-voice/beer-in-hand words, Moffat's long walked the talk,
staggering through Arab Strap's tenure in a fashion going somewhere
close to the hard-knock life he's knocked out in spoken words across
the duo's seven years and five albums. Of course, with all that beer
under the bridge, Aidan ain't as hard as he once was. Monday at
the Hug & Pint finds the mumbling curmudgeon confessing, with
typical candor: "These days my cock's as numb as my heart." And, from
the guy who once actually said "You can't get over your dead dog?/
Well, it takes one to know one" in a song, you'll know that he must
be talking about a seriously insensitive penis. Let me hear you say
"flaccid"! Such said, that we're talking soft-cocks here is testament
to the charismatic quality cultivated by Moffat's, uh, shtick, his
self-deprecating self-degradating self-flagellating type dear-diary
words filled with comedy and honesty and irony to go with the
debauchery. For those who've been following along at home, there'll
be plenty of lines to draw between the salad-days Moffat and the
droopy-age Moffat with this latest, fifth disc. The thematic thrust
of Monday at the Hug & Pint recalls the former AS ode "The
Beautiful Barmaids of Dundee"; stomping opener "The Shy Retirer" is a
reminder of past calls-to-arms like "The First Big Weekend" and
"Hey!fever"; and, kinda strangely, an arousing tune arises here
called "The Week Never Starts Around Here," which was once just the
name of the first Arab Strap album. Oh, yeah, I should say this:
Conor Oberst and Bill Wells and Barry Burns all show up. Moffat and
cohort Malcolm Middleton are back after both issued solo albums in
2002, back together sounding more Strap-like than they did on the,
uh, adventurous The Red Thread, even though this disc does
plump for "variety" over solidity. But, uh, yeah, I guess that's it.
Oh, wait, maybe this is a better conclusion: "I needed a nurse and a
mother/ I needed an open-minded whore/ I needed a barmaid and a
lover/ Someone to stand between me and the floor."
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