Rockbites: Arab Strap’s The Red Thread

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February 2001 • Rockbites Alternative Daily

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Arab Strap’s The Red Thread
23 February 2001

Falkirk, Scotland singer/songwriter Aidan Moffatt, whose vision of painfully honest, disarmingly personal storytelling has established him as an unusually provocative musical artist, releases his eagerly awaited fourth studio album with his band Arab Strap next week on Matador for North America, Chemikal Underground for the UK, and Zomba for Europe. Deep and expansive, beautiful and frightening, The Red Thread will be (or ought to be) a landmark for artistic pop.
    Apparently a clue to Moffatt’s personal ethos, the disc’s title refers to the Rinzai Zen Buddhist school which seeks to reconcile sexuality with spirituality. Today that tradition is symbolized in the Eastern custom of tying a red thread around a new bride’s waist. Lest we feel too spiritual or classical, though, recall that the name of the band refers to a leather penis apparatus, available for US$25, used to enhance sexual stimulation.
    The Red Thread (the album), while pure trademark Arab Strap—gloomy, erotic, and perhaps a bit scary to the uninitiated—evidences no signs of cliché or boredom. To the contrary, the new ten-track set is as musically risky and emotionally compelling as ever. Moffatt’s words and Malcom Middleton’s guitar work hook you with charisma and yank you right down into the dank basement of their psyches, which you’ll discover stretches to the horizon with images of pain and beauty, despair and hope. And no, they don’t take themselves too fucking seriously, thank God.
    Singer Adele Bethel, who performed with the band for their live album Mad For Sadness, guests on the tracks The Long Sea, Infrared, and Haunt Me. Her lusty but fragile voice proves a delicious complement to Moffatt’s half-whispered growl.
    Arab Strap continue a UK tour today at The Foundry in Sheffield, running through a London show at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on 10 March. They’ll start their first extensive North American tour later this year.
    Whether you own every Arab Strap album and EP or none of them, we enthusiastically recommend The Red Thread. Five bites out of five.

Rockbites ratings  5: life changing, 4: stunning, 3: captivating, 2: amusing, 1: annoying.

| Arab Strap (the band) | | Arab Strap (the sex toy) | | essay on Red Thread Zen | | discography | | CD | | top of page |

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