I'm totally fine with it don't give a fuck anymore

Album review

Now is the summer of Arab Strap's (latest) discontent. In the late '90s, the duo's songs focused on vices—drugs, alcohol, empty sex. Thirty years later, Aidan Moffatt and Malcolm Middleton are repulsed and fascinated by the minefields of the online world: the conspiracy theories, the anonymized hate, the dearth of real human connection, and the addictive nature of it all. "I come to you for confirmation/ Testimony, adulation/ Education, excitation/ Palpitation and flirtation/ But you give me aggravation/ Insult and disinformation/ Hatred, bias and predation," Moffatt sings on "Sociometer Blues." Set to manic disco-fever beats that match his racing recitation, it presents as a romance gone very wrong. "It's specifically about X and my addiction to it … we're all programmed to think that this is the way to live now—that social media is what we need in life, which isn't true at all," he has said. Even for a band that has always played it dark (if sometimes tongue-in-cheek), Arab Strap's high-concept eighth album feels like a harbinger of the death of civilized society. But alarm bells have never sounded better. "Allatonceness" is absolutely sinister with a sound that just gets bigger and nastier as it goes. "They've got your attention/ The slapstick insurgents, with giggles and shits and grenades/ They've got your attention/ Deluders and doxers, self-righteous self-styled renegades," Moffatt sings—part worried Cassandra, part gleeful devil on a shoulder. He turns balladeer (a little Leonard Cohen, a little Nick Cave) on "Summer Season," bemoaning a friendship that descends from IRL kinship to nothing more than social-media likes. Set to keening keys, "You're Not There" blindly embraces sending texts to a lover who's disappeared—Moffatt shooting blue-bubble valentines into the void. Harrowing "Bliss" takes on an urgent yet shadowy Depeche Mode tone to capture the shittiness of women being harassed by men who might seem normal offline but become monsters behind avatars: "They said beware of strangers/ But now that's all we are." "Hide Your Fires" serves up percussion like a snake's hiss and rattle. "Strawberry Moon" plays it chaotic but, as ever, Moffatt steadily holds down the fort: droning and intoning in a burr that threatens and promises with equal confidence. "Haven't You Heard" is bouncy—as cheerful as Arab Strap gets—with a great '80s pop drumbeat and bouncy New Wave piano. "Safe & Well," meanwhile, chills with its acoustic strum and medieval flute and Moffatt adding up the toll of social bonds lost to pandemic lockdown. "Who needs family, who needs friends? … I found my people now," he sings with a grotesque grin on "Turn off the Light"—right before a glorious, cathartic kick-in seems to laugh at his folly. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz