A nation weeps into it's bottle of Bucky - Arab Strap split up

Malcolm's last solo album Into The Woods was one of last year's least heralded great records, and Aidan's Lucky Pierre stuff is wonderful as well.

The live album Mad For Sadness was our favourite record of theirs (and we were in the audience); highlight being "The Girls Of Summer" - phenomenal.

RIP youse guys.

i saw their show at the Get Off My Pavement fest in glasgow about a month ago. they seemed, well, fine! this is too bad but i guess maybe for the best. it'll be interesting to see what Aidan does next.

-- Marcello Carlin

Also my favorite album. Great that you were there. Was the climax of "New Birds" (my favorite track) as loud as it sounds?

If I could pick only one record though, it would have to be the Cherubs EP, "Pulled" is one the most intense 5 minutes you're ever likely to hear...

RIP Arab Strap..

Middleston's Into The Woods album was also a good 'un.

i went to their website only yesterday - one of my friend's birthdays is on the night that the live album was recorded, and i always end up checking the discography because it's never in my diary. i saw them at the union chapel on the philophobia tour and they were phenomenal, and their gig at the garage a few months ago was pretty great, too, as a number of ilxors can attest.

never listened to into the woods, but malcolm's first solo album was a highlight of 2002 for me.

now keeping ym fingers crossed that their farewell dates aren't during the couple of weeks i'm away in oct/nov...

and mcd otm: they seemed like one of a kind

-- a.b. (aaaaaathatsfivea...), September 8th, 2006. (alanbanana) (later)

qft

Remember that beer advert where they got a more comprehensible scot to do the voiceover?

the last malcolm middleton album is, as MC says upthread, a thing of joy and wonder. although they're both interesting and talented (piss) artists, and i look forward to seeing what each of them comes up with next, it'll be malcolm's career i follow with far more interest.

they're one of those bands i associate with a very particular time and place in my life (namely glasgow in the late 1990s) and i think that's maybe why i don't listen to them much today ... i mean, i played "philophobia" to death at the time and i'm not sure i ever want to hear it again. it all struck a bit too much of a chord. i'm not even sure i'll bother with the farewell gigs ... for some reason i'm happier keeping them in my past. hmm.

hey ho. to new beginnings, and all that.

"The Last Romance" was a perfectly fine album, but whatever reason I can't forge a strong connection with it (it's much the same with "Elephant Shoe"). There are only so many stories about getting sloshed and banging some chick that I truly need to hear from any one band. Also, Arab Strap are far better when they sulk than when they rock.

Bollocks, they've added a second night in Glasgow, meaning I'm going to the penultimate gig. Oh well.

I'm gutted, they're possibly my favourite band. Loved them since buying the first single (in Sleeves in Kirkcaldy, trivia hunters). I am on 'The Cunted Circus', the guy that Aidan sings 'Especially For You' for.

(I'm bummed, I thought they were one of the more unique and interesting groups around. To a suburban American, those stories of Scottish nightlife sounded downright alien).

It'll be open again by then, don't fret

Another favourite Aidan moment was after last year's Electric Magnolia Co gig at Mono - whilst enjoying a post gig slash Aidan let forth a thundering great fart and, grinning with great satifaction, exclaimed, "EXCUSE ME GENTS!"

What a legend!

The intro to Loch Leven ushers the band in, followed by a recorded rant by a Falkirk councillor (presumably from a news interview) denouncing them as talentless. Aidan tells us that this is the end, and we get some ridiculously early material like 'Gilded'. They have clearly BROUGHT THE ROCK, and 'Speed-Date' threatens to turn into the Rother-era Kraftwerk with Aidan building a dense motorik beat out of a synthdrum set up next to the kit. 'New Birds' is thrown in amazingly early and is completely vicious, probably the best I've heard it until... the noisy bit at the end is... different. There's almost a jaunty beat under it, and none of the menace. Worse yet, Malcolm breaks a string and there's a long pause while his guitar gets fixed. We get an acoustic version of 'Serenade' and then Aidan tells his Kylie Minogue joke to fill the space.

Then it all starts going wrong. It just seems all a bit perfunctory for the next bit, with some choices I can't understand. Does anybody actually like 'There Is No Ending'? And I can't stand 'Loch Leven', one of the worst pieces of umpty-tum in their repertoire.

Then 'The First Big Weekend' comes out of nowhere. And it's blinding. You remember exactly why you love this band, exactly what they've meant to you, and exactly why they were your favourite band. You remember what you were doing the first time you heard this song, and where you bought it. You remember that time Aidan got back with that girl and the whole set was an astonishingly bitter rant about her because he'd just found out she was shagging around behind his back again. You remember organising a work trip specifically to see them at the other end of the country. You remember how frustrating it was a couple of years ago, when they seemed not to care any more. You remember "it's officially summer".

The encores are a bit flat after that, culminating with an acoustic version of 'The Shy Retirer' that seems to sum up their career. "If we ever make it home, I'll tell you all the things that shaped me thus." And then the pigs chuck us out.

When I tried to do my coat up in the cold outside, there was a button missing. It must have fallen off during the gig.

I lost a button off my duffelcoat watching Arab Strap for the final time.

TWEE-EST EPITAPH EVER.

Going to Manchester too.

Boy, still love Mad for Sadness. Not sure I can think of another band where my favorite album by them is the live one.

Something from that came up on shuffle the other day and I wondered yet again why I don't play them more often.

Okay, I saw this in the shop and was unable to resist buying it; it's the coolest thing ever:

A new single by Aidan Moffat, about 20 seconds long, released in one format: Beer bottle opener.

When you open a beer, it sings: "Beer you are my enemy, beer you are my friend / my mind was yours to cloud, and so my heart is yours to mend."

http://www.discogs.com/image/R-1301196-1207756993.jpeg

I think it's my favorite thing I own.

http://shop.chemikal.co.uk/acatalog/BOTT-NEW.jpg

want

Number one for xmas!

http://www.resonancestore.com/aidanmoffat/index.html?s=home&m=&c=viewitem&item_id=14417

Get 'em while they're cold.

C'mon! It's a beer bottle opener!

With a song! By an ex-arab strap dude!

It's clever how they've replicated his teeth like that

even better:

sex advice with aidan moffat. and you know what? it's fucking brilliant (pun intended).

All these teenagers wearing lingerie and experimenting with homosexuality and using vibrating rabbit ears and sticking foreign objects up their arses and dressing up – it’s not right.

Bye bye pop music, then.

i'd love to know what charts you've been listening to recently.

Mainly old Pick Of The Pops charts with people like David Bowie and Frankie Goes To Hollywood in them.

After reading this hybrid of sexual advice and indie, I wanted to look for pornography in a forest.

Who are you, Robert Smith?

Bravo

"Soaps" is an awesome song.

the live version of "New Birds" on that 10-song live record, Philophobia era, was always my favorite thing of theirs on record.

sex column is great btw!

Still broken up but the reissues are coming -- first two albums getting the remaster/bonus track treatment (bonus tracks being their first two Peel Sessions, the first ever show in 1996 and T in the Park from 1998).

i wish i were dead -- and that's fookin serious