The Week Never Starts Around Here **
Philophobia **
Chemikal Underground

Falkirk’s Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton have, as the years pass, gained something of a reputation as being more miserable than your average blues song. Formed in the mid-1990s over a shared obsession with the likes of Smog and Palace Brothers, Arab Strap (a gentleman’s genital appliance, don’t you know) initially came across as a characteristically honest if dour band adept at displaying the more sordid aspects of personal life and city mores. Unfortunately, these reissues of their 1996 debut and 1998 follow-up do them little favours. What we have here are often tuneless ramblings on drunken, existential sex (or the lack thereof) and drug-riven personalities, underpinned with music of such morose sparseness it makes Will Oldham sound like Mika. See chemikal.co.uk/arab strap.htm

Download track: The First Big Weekend