True to its name, As Days Get Dark can often come across like a haunting, heavy listen. Whether it’s the beginning of a new chapter or an isolated event, As Days Get Dark presents a new version of Arab Strap - still turning over many of the same ideas and encounters, but doing so with an older and wiser tone. But it did: Last year, the duo announced As Days Get Dark, their first album in 16 years. When they regrouped for some live shows several years ago, it didn’t quite seem like the reunion would stick long enough for new music to be written. Moffat and Middleton disbanded in the late ’00s, and at the time it seemed they had little interest in ever considering a revival. Perhaps, at a certain juncture, that made Arab Strap the territory of younger men. Arab Strap were a cult favorite in their day, their sound often resembling the comedowns and reckonings of the stories they told even as their dance-oriented rhythms played like faint echoes of the prior night at the club. But as often as Arab Strap could come across as sad or bleary-eyed, there was also wryness, charm, commiseration. On paper, the group was a funny prospect: Acoustic guitars and programmed beats and Moffat’s Scottish sing-speak, all cataloguing the youthful listlessness of big weekends, long nights, and dead-end dalliances. Back in the mid-’90s, Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton formed a band called Arab Strap.
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