Iconic Scottish troubadours Arab Strap have announced details of their forthcoming 7th studio album, ‘As Days Get Dark’, their first since 2005’s The Last Romance, and due 5th March 2021.
“It’s about hopelessness and darkness,” says singer and lyricist Aidan Moffat. “But in a fun way.”
Despite coming out of that late nineties scene that has gone on to influence much of what is great about the current Scottish music scene, Moffat makes it clear that the aim is not to “recapture the 90s…This album feels like its own new thing to me,” he says. “It’s definitely Arab Strap, but an older and wiser one, and quite probably a better one.”
As Days Get Dark should be a record that manages to feel like both evolution and revolution: a continuation of what has come before but also a bold leap into the future and as guitarist Malcolm Middleton affirms, “There’s no point getting back together to release mediocrity…we’ve had enough distance from our earlier work to reappraise and dissect the good and bad elements of what we did,” concluding, “There’s no point getting back together to release mediocrity.”
Track List:
1. The Turning of Our Bones
2. Another Clockwork Day
3. Compersion Pt. 1
4. Bluebird
5. Kebabylon
6. Tears On Tour
7. Here Comes Comus!
8. Fable of the Urban Fox
9. I Was Once a Weak Man
10. Sleeper
11. Just Enough
Watch a ‘censored’ version of new single Compersion Pt. 1 here, with its insistent guitar riff, and overbidding sense of melancholy locked into it. Over the top Aidan Moffat nails his poetic lines to the track. If we needed any kind of vaccine for 2020, it might just have appeared.
As if that wasn’t enough for you, a short but sweet run of tour dates has also been announced, and having seen this band no end of times, right up to their last ‘reunion’ dates back in 2016, I can safely say you won’t want to miss out.
4th Manchester Manchester Academy 2
5th Ireland Dublin Vicar St. 6th Birmingham The Mill
7th Bristol SWX
8th London Electric Ballroom
9th Newcastle upon Tyne Boiler Shop
10th Glasgow Barrowland Ballroom
Tickets go on general sale 10am on 27th November, pre-sale 10am 26th.
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