Arab Strap
I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍
ROCK ACTION
Mischievous Scottish duo Arab Strap is now in middle age and deep into their second-life comeback as a group, which started back in 2016 after their initial run from 1995 to the late-aughts. The cultural landscape has certainly shifted online since the band’s carnal and late-night obsessed early albums, most specifically their darkly glimmering run from 1996’s The Week Never Starts Round Here to 2003’s Monday at the Hug & Pint.
In a press release, primary lyricist Aidan Moffat shared that many of the songs on the cheekily titled I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍 center on the very-2024 social media assault of the senses: “It's about being addicted to the endless stream of online lunacy and bullshit—constant bad news, disinformation and conspiracy theories, abuse and threats etc.—when I know I should be out engaging with the world in a more physical, meaningful way. But I can’t stop scrolling, because I’ve been conditioned to constantly seek and consume information, which perpetuates the tide of misery and makes me part of the problem.” The emoji-filled title was also influenced by Marshall McLuhan's frightening and still-pertinent writing from the 1960s.
Moffat and longtime bandmate Malcolm Middleton give our global village a fitting pre-apocalyptic synthy soundtrack, following in the footsteps of 2021’s As Days Get Dark. Opening track “Allatonceness” hits you over the head with growling guitars and Paleolithic drumming as Moffat rails against all the usual suspects online with his middle-aged rage, but a particular focus falls on toxic masculinity, online hate speech, and edgelord conspiracy theories. It’s a complex, layered, and dark vision, but also breezes by with a rich and danceable interplay between bass, guitars, and drums.
Anyone who’s “done their own research” gets skewered over a synth-rock miasma, or what Moffat calls his “quiet anger.” The Nazis and rapists get hit again on the dark disco banger “Bliss.” It’s one of the lighter surprises on a fairly dower record which has a track about missing the solo-drinking solitude of the pandemic lockdown (“Summer Season”), a funk-rock face melter (“Sociometer Blues”), and an acoustic song narrated by a ghost (“Safe & Well”). Early single “Strawberry Moon” also remembers the best of the early years of Arab Strap as it amortizes with their current style. So yeah, it’s not an album you drop the needle on during the family reunion, but its misanthropic charms can hit in places.
All these decades later, Arab Strap are still in love with late-night romanticism and debauchery. The duo can’t go a full album just railing against a cruel world of bigots, as evidenced by the rain-soaked and bullied rock laments “Haven’t You Heard,” “You’re Not There” and “Molehills.” They may lash out at all the discourse on their computer screens and blast the trolls that fret over pronoun usage, but the music is still just as punk and dancey as their pub days. Naturally, I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍 begins and ends with the sounds of a dial-up modem. Say hello to the internet and the beginning of our destruction. Go out with a banger, kids.
