Arab Strap announce ninth album, Half-Told Tales

The new album arrives thirty years after the Scottish indie band — led by Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton — released their first single, "The First Big Weekend", which was featured on their debut album The Week Never Starts Round Here.

Lead single "You You You" lands today in what Moffat describes as, “a sort of disco-metal incantation, with a message of future felicity and fellowship that – fingers crossed – might make you dance and giggle too.”

The single is one glimpse into the wider themes of the album, serving as "an attempt to remind ourselves, and hopefully others, that the world’s not full of awful people,” Moffat continues. “That there are millions of us out there dealing with the same worries every day: from the rising costs of absolutely everything, our mental and physical health, the constant slaughter and tyranny in our newsfeeds, to playing an unwitting part in the military-industrial complex, and the endless warping of reality.

"It can often feel like a complete absence of human decency – it’s no wonder that despondency can feel like our default disposition. It was designed as a kind of invocation,” says Moffat. “To bring forth the stubbornly elusive spirits of hope and solidarity.”

Discussing the push-pull process of how the album came together, Middleton adds: “The excitement comes because me and Aidan like and hate different things. There are things in the record that individually we might not choose but that’s why I like this album so much, because it's not the one I wanted to make. I don't think it's what Aidan wanted to make either, it's this bit in the middle. It might not be 100% what we want but it's good for the band, and it works.”

Half-Told Tales artwork

Half-Told Tales tracklist

"I Get Noise"
"You You You"
"Be a Man"
"Fighting For You"
"Glamour Magick"
"Gape"
"Under Offer"
"Basic Physics"
"Sunsong"
"Dollar Park"
"Mr. Splitfoot"
"Ampersand"
"Fragments"
"Beats Per Minute"