ALBUM REVIEW: Arab Strap – Half-Told Tales

Rock Action

Released: 04.09.26

30 years on from The First Big Weekend, and a decade after kickstarting a reunion that’s exceeded even their most ardent fans’ expectations, it’s little wonder Arab Strap have never sounded so assured. Even so, the sound of Half-Told Tales – their third post-reformation album, and ninth overall – transcends that of a band aging gracefully, consolidating a career of masterful melancholy. The strongest showing yet from their second wind, this 14-track opus carries the air of a fresh milestone, of Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton’s partnership reaching a creative zenith.

Certainly, the duo have never felt more comfortable or compelled responding to current events. Straight out of the traps, I Get Noise is the most urgent, agitated and angry Arab Strap have ever sounded; a breathless, overstimulated lament at a world impossible to switch off from, where “liars, frauds and thieves” operate with impunity and poisoned discourse is as all-encompassing as air pollution. Elsewhere, Fighting for You’s proto-metal riffage aims squarely at false prophets, tech overlords and right-wing press barons profiting from fear, division and rose-tinted nostalgia. Glamour Magick, meanwhile, is a grisly jab at a toxic wellness culture whose aging protagonist has undergone (among other things) a scrotal lift and cat litter, gold-plate and semen facials, not to mention sucking the plasma from his own offspring.

This could all sound awfully bleak – not least from a duo famed for their dourness – yet Half-Told Tales is defined not by righteous fury, but rather a defiant, pervasive sense of hope. Its solutions lie in the bonds which endure, even in a world increasingly tailored to divide societies, drive wedges between friends and families, and even shatter the innate connection between parent and child.

To this end, You You You is far more than the best pure pop song they’ve ever written – a single to rank among the First Big Weekends, Shy Retirers and Turning of Our Bones’ in the Strap hall of fame. This is love as a form of protest; a super-power which overbearing governments and even the passing of time and slowly decaying bodies cannot break. Remarkably, it’s not even the finest moment here. That accolade – for this writer, at least – goes to Be a Man, in which Moffat applies to parenthood the same nuance, intimacy and self-reflection that’s previously distinguished his musings on sex and relationships. Touching, hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure, it’s a song whose resonance will persist long after the grifters, life hack experts and manosphere influencers have disappeared from young boys’ algorithms; a vintage example of current affairs lyricism underpinned by themes both universal and eternal.

Maintaining their relentless momentum, Half-Told Tales is no less forward-facing than its predecessors. In many ways it’s the most eclectic Arab Strap record to date, casting its sonic net far and wide, with additional woodwind embellishing moments of beauty and chaos. However, arriving on the occasion of their 30th birthday, it’s also a record which provides nuggets for followers to reminisce. Under Offer and Beats Per Minute’s electrifying spoken word, for instance, harken back to Moffat’s stellar work with Bill Wells in the early 2010s; the former broadside at the outgoing owners of a former family home, the latter wide-eyed and cinematic in its musings on the universe and its relationship with time. Best of all, Ampersand is Arab Strap of a vintage we’ve not heard in at least 20 years, reviving the wearied, hungover groove of early classics as well as the jaded murk of Middleton’s finest solo outings.

Big anniversaries inevitably encourage reflection, yet on the back of one of their strongest albums ever – and third stellar offering in five years – its tempting to wonder whether there’s ever been a better time to be an Arab Strap fan. In a sense, Half-Told Tales’ themes of love and time signpost an outlook for us all to adopt going forward: to savour them, and enjoy them while they last.