Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark

Pitchfork 80

Read Stuart Berman’s review of the album.

The Guardian 0

(Rock Action)
The caustic duo forge existential stories from tinny beats on their first album in 16 years

For anyone not yet acquainted with the caustic charms of Arab Strap, their first album in 16 years makes an excellent primer. Coming on like a union between Sleaford Mods and Leonard Cohen consummated in a Glasgow pub toilet, As Days Get Dark serves up bleakness and gallows humour multiple ways: “dejected, deserted and drunk”.

The callowness of the pair’s 90s youth – they were named after a sex toy – has been replaced by something altogether more lived-in and existential. The Turning of Our Bones exhorts listeners to seize the sexual day, because to dust we shall return. I Was Once a Weak Man is a prize-winning short story in miniature, following the stealth moves of a veteran adulterer.