“On their first album in 16 years, the Scottish duo situates themselves in the current moment, teasing out new modes of songwriting while remaining as wry, dark, and self-lacerating as ever.”
“For anyone not yet acquainted with the caustic charms of Arab Strap, their first album in 16 years makes an excellent primer. Coming on like a union between Sleaford Mods and Leonard Cohen consummated in a Glasgow pub toilet, As Days Get Dark serves up bleakness and gallows humour multiple ways: “dejected, deserted and drunk”. The callowness of the pair’s 90s youth – they were named after a sex t”
“Indie kings Aidan Moffat and Malcom Middleton’s first album as Arab Strap in 16 years is also the best of their career. This is a dingy, debauched and tragi-comic universe – and all conjured with extraordinary depth in less than 50 minutes. Just about every track on ‘As Days Get Dark’ is unflinching in its depictions of life’s most sordid nooks and crannies. ‘The Turning Of Our Bones’ is a grizzl”
“According to Aidan Moffat, As Days Get Dark is about “resurrection and shagging”, “hopelessness and darkness”. As if that wasn’t what every Arab Strap album was about. Nobody does horny, hungover, misanthropic filth quite like Moffat and Malcolm Middleton. This is their first album since 2005’s The Last Romance, but their aesthetic is so singular that it feels like they’ve just picked up directly”
