Arab Strap bid goodbye to Wakefield's Long Division festival

Among those chosen to headline on Saturday are Arab Strap, the indie band from Falkirk who reformed in 2020 after a 15-year break and released their seventh – and highest charting – album, As Days Get Dark, the following year.

Talking to The Yorkshire Post via video, bandmates Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton both recall previous “very good” experiences when playing at the festival as solo artists, and are looking forward to returning as a duo.

“We’re doing the theatre as a sort of stripped back thing,” says Moffat. “I like that room, I’ve played there twice or maybe even more – definitely once with Bill Wells and once with RM Hubbert – and it’s been great...Dean (Freeman, the festival’s director) has been asking us to do it (as Arab Strap) for years but we could never make it work. So, knowing it was the last chance, we thought we’d better do something to make it work out.”

For the first time in Arab Strap’s career, the band find themselves having infiltrated the mainstream, following the top 20 success of their 2021 reunion album, As Days Get Dark. Given their uncompromising material, which treats dark subjects with pitch-black humour, Moffat admits that mainstream acceptance caught them slightly unawares. “We knew that people wanted to see us playing the old songs – we’d done a tour with that and played some festivals – but I’m not sure it was as much a surprise as a relief, to be honest,” he says. “We’d made a record that people still wanted to hear.

“It did do very well. There aren’t many bands (in our position). I think we’re lucky and privileged in that respect. We’re reformed after a long time and made a record that seems to have connected with people just as much as the old ones. And there’s a lot of younger people coming to see us now as well, people who are just discovering us. I was talking to Chemikal Underground (their first label) about how our streaming figures suddenly took a big rise on the older stuff, and that’s great. We’re working on new stuff just now and I’ve been calling it the second album...what is it actually, the eighth?”

“It has been good because the reviews could have been the other way,” says Middleton. “Because we did it for the right reason as well, we didn’t make an album to repeat what we’d already been doing and I don’t want to say cash in because were not that big, but we made a decent album that was honest for us and I think people saw that. We didn’t try to do ten more The First Big Weekends.”

Moffat says the undiluted subject matter of the album reflected “a pretty dark time” during the Covid pandemic and lockdown. “We’d thought of the title before the lockdowns had started, and we were going to change it because we thought it was a bit too on the nose by the time it came out, but we decided to stick with it,” he recalls. “I remember joking at the time that everyone else has just caught up with our world view...But it’s not just bleak and desolate. Writing these songs is an act of expulsion, dealing with these things. There’s a comfort in it too, I think. It definitely helped that it chimed with the general mood that was out there at the time.”

At the age of 50, Moffat finds himself looking outward more as a songwriter.

“You’re always writing about yourself to a degree. I don’t believe anyone can completely extricate themselves from their writing, you’re always writing about things that are important to you, but I certainly don’t feel the need to write autobiographical songs like I used to because life isn’t that interesting any more,” he says. “We do the school runs. I remember thinking it would be interesting to do a First Big Weekend about what actually happens at weekends now, it would be really boring, it would be 40 seconds long...there’s a lot of nodding off on the sofa.”

“I like an afternoon nap,” agrees Middleton.

A review of the album in Record Collector seemed to hit the nail on the head when it suggested that Arab Strap felt like a band “that had a future again”. Middleton says it “felt refreshing” when they started gigging again in 2016 “and then even more so when we realised we could still write songs”. However, they had not planned any further than As Days Get Dark. “We don’t know what out future is as a band, I certainly just take it one thing at a time,” he says. “We’re working on a new record now, so that’s good, but we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t feel excited. Reinvigorated is a bit of a stretch for us, but we’re enjoying making music together and playing live, so that’s all we can ask for, and the plus is that other people seem to be enjoying it as well.”

“We were in the studio yesterday working on stuff and it’s quite exciting when something’s coming together, certainly ​​​​​​,” saus Moffat. “Although I think the most exciting part is writing the songs, which we do mostly at home apart. As Malcolm says, I’m not sure invigorated is the word, but the results have been great, so we’re inspired to go on.”

Their working relationship remains “exactly the same” as it has always been, Moffat reckons. “The only difference is the technology,” he says. “We write things separately at home. Wheras Malcolm used to send me a cassette, now it’s WAV files or stems for some songs and then I try and respond to the music at home and write something around it, and then we record it, put far too much on it and try to take it all back, then mix it and it comes out.”

“I could’ve probably saved money at the start and just walked round to (Moffat’s) house,” jokes Middleton. ​​​​​​

“I suppose in the 90s we could afford to spend a day in the studio just a***ing about trying to make a song whereas that’s too expensive now,” says Moffat.

“It’s not so much the expense, it’s just we’ve got technology in our houses that can record high resolution files,” adds Middleton. “Also, when we’re in the studio, we don’t sit about eating sandwiches and reading magazines any more. We’re older, we’re like, ‘Wait a minute, this is costing us money’ and we use the time better.”

“Any way to save money,” agrees Moffat. “When were on a major label there were a few hairy moments which is why I think we’ve learned to do everything ourselves, which has made us naturally frugal when it comes to making records. It’s the best way to be. You do not want to spend money that you don’t need to spend when you’re making a record, especially these days when there’s so much of it out there. Campaigns can get so expensive.”

“I think we learned over one album that it’s quite expensive to sound s***, but you can be good for free,” says Middleton.

Moffat admits they do have creative disagreements but says “it’s all part of the process” of making records, adding: “What’s the Metallica thing in Some Kind of Monster – is it ‘tension produces results’?”

“Even though we’ve got different tastes and different styles, I think we both want the same result,” says Middleton. “We both have an idea of the result we’re after. We’ve got Paul Savage who records our stuff and he’s like a...”

“Referee,” Moffat interjects.

“I wouldn’t say he’s a referee, he’s like on your side,” Middleton argues.

“Well, that’s because I get to fluff him up in the car on the way in,” Moffat explains. “I always travel to the studio with Paul, so I’m in his good books by the time we get there.”

“It’​​​​​​​s because they’re both drummers,” believes Middleton. “So I have just to sit there and watch the level of ride cymbal for three hours.”

Where Arab Strap’s ​​​​​​​early records offered a warts-and-all portrait ​​​​​​​of youth culture in the 1990s, Middleton believes in middle age they are “pretty much doing the exactly the same but it’s for our own age group, our own culture that’s around us, whether it’s political or reflecting what we’re seeing, rather than still trying to be in our twenties, whatever Aidan’s seeing ​​​​​​​in front of him and wants to talk about”.

“That’s certainly true of As Days Get Dark,” Moffat concurs. “Although that wasn’t particularly applicable to Fable of the Urban Fox, I think there was a lot of that in the last record. The Turning of the Bones is about rejuvenation and reviving things.

“The reason I’m (concerned) is we are starting to see younger people at our gigs, particularly at festivals and I’m starting to worry that I’m writing about old man things. There are quite a lot of artists that I like who get to a certain age and just singing old-man-shouts-at-clouds material, and I don’t want to get to that stage.”

“To be fair,” says Middleton drily, “a lot of the young ones we’re seeing at our gigs are being dragged along by their dads.”

Arab Strap play at Long Division festival, Wakefield on Saturday June 10. https://longdivisionfestival.co.uk/