Arab Strap's 'Half-Told Tales' Is a Widescreen Masterpiece of Late-Career Nerve
There is a particular kind of late-career record that stops managing expectations and starts spending everything at once. Half-Told Tales, Arab Strap’s ninth, out September 4th on Rock Action, is that record — fourteen tracks, made again with Paul Savage, the producer who has been in the room for more of this band’s history than almost anyone.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Savage’s long association with the band shows in how much room the bottom of the mix is given. Aidan Moffat’s voice has always sat close and dry, more confession than performance, and the arrangements around it here are built to leave that intimacy intact while getting substantially bigger underneath it.
The Spatial Dynamics: Saxophone is the headline texture — both The Quietus and The Skinny single it out, including a solo on “Be a Man.” Zara Hedderman, writing for The Quietus, argues that “the arrangements are the most outgoing and far-reaching of anything else in their 30-year-long career,” and calls the record “one of Arab Strap’s most fulfilled and fulfilling body of work.” The player is uncredited in the sources we could find, so we’ll leave the name out rather than guess at it.
Standout Performance
Malcolm Middleton, whose guitar and arrangements Record Collector describes as orchestrating the whole backdrop. Moffat gets the quotes; Middleton builds the rooms the quotes happen in. “Dollar Park,” picked out by both Far Out and The Skinny, is the clearest case — the writing is bleak, the setting is enormous, and the two things refuse to cancel each other out.
Why It’s Certified
Metacritic puts it at 84 — universal acclaim — across seven reviews, with musicOMH at 90 and Uncut, Mojo, The Quietus, The Skinny, Dusted and Record Collector clustered at 80. musicOMH: “With every listen, something new and poignant seems to loom out and squeeze your heart and mind.” The Skinny’s Lewis Wade calls it “long and chaotic,” “appropriately loose in structure,” and notes that “its big heart will creep up on you.” Moffat has said of “You You You” that it was “designed as a kind of invocation to bring forth the stubbornly elusive spirits of hope.” It works. Certified great.