Arab Strap

Arab Strap

CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND. CD/DL/LP Dormant Falkirk duo offer 20 ‘secret hits and rarities’. How typically Arab Strap that this set commemorates the band’s ‘death’, 10 years ago, as well as the 20th anniversary of Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat first unleashing their inimitably frank confessions. Hindsight affirms this music’s durability, as well as its universal scope: the neurotic friction underpinning The First Big Weekend transcends the specifically Scottish pilled-up vernacular, proof that Arab Strap’s appeal owed as much to Middleton’s centrifugally emotive chord patterns as Moffat’s disarming verbals. Disc one functions as a standalone best-of – mostly technopulsed singles; none finer than Love Detective’s grimy Steely Dan lounge action – then disc two trawls for lesser-spotted pearls. The former reveals the duo’s electro-minimalist woe as surprisingly prescient, while pick of the latter is Daughters Of Darkness, a roiling urban drama worked up post-split in 2009. Another studio reunion wouldn’t be the worst idea.