Arab Strap: I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍

“You take all my time / You take all my strength/ You steal all my love / You are the worst friend I’ve ever had,” claims Aidan Moffat during Sociometer Rupees – one of the many vicious vignettes from Arab Strap’s I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍.

The Glasgow-based duo, which includes Moffat’s partner in crime Malcolm Middleton, have worn out barstools of many of the city’s free houses, reciting the characters that keep such establishments afloat. Spaces populated by the depressed, the sad, the crazy and the lonely, all scraping for vestiges of hope from the ale-riddled floors. Of course, they find fuck all, because, well… that’s how life shakes out.

Moffat and Middleton have probably seen a bit of themselves through the mélange of characters dotted throughout their discography; an eight-album reign that has been spent trying to unpick life’s morbid realities with profane poeticism.

On I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍, Arab Strap trade in the ale house for home comforts (of sorts), offering a fierce indictment of the digital age and all the misinformation and toxicity that comes with it. While 2020’s As Days Get Dark touched on these themes. I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍sees Moffat and Middleton in full force, navigating through the murky portals that lead to existentialist dread.

For artists that have enjoyed a moderate degree of success back in the late ’90s/early ’00s, to see their work in 2024 commodified like a couch or lampshade from IKEA must be absolutely demoralising. In Arab Stap’s case, there’s a beautiful irony, for this digital age landscape is fertile ground for Moffat and Middleton who are at their austere and acerbic best here.

Jim White and Marisa Anderson: Swallowtail

So, too, sonically, where Arab Strap add new weapons to their arsenal. Still dispensing the kind of dreadscapes that clearly represent their narratives, the duo also ventures down new paths. At times, it’s almost like the pair spent their respective lockdowns getting to grips with the Modern Love discography, and the cold floors of glitch and tech house serves them well.

I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍begins just how it ends – with the sound of a dial-up pre-broadband modem (remember them?). While the backdrops on Allatonceness may be different, the characters remain the same. The deluders, the doctors, the self-righteous, the groomers, the grifters, the antagonised fan boys and the self-styled renegades, all “derailing discourse for fun”.

It’s standard fare keyboard warrior stuff, and on the back of a wiry post-punk aesthetic, the story shifts from this new world back into the old one, where Moffat’s character yearns for a world where smelling the sea, stripping by a stream and feeling his balls in the breeze hasn’t been so liberating. It’s the idea of off-grid living in what feels like a utopia as online culture has reality under siege. 

Then there’s the dark poetic majesty of Bliss – one of the finest songs Arab Strap have written. With BPM rushes colliding with tremolo, Arab Strap explore the dark underbelly of the world wide web through a woman who’s harangued in a myriad of ways. “She reads the words that fathers, husbands, sons and brothers said / But there’s no knowing what is going on inside another head,” sings Moffat, who offers a blitzkrieg of prose that drips from the page (“Thay said beware of strangers / But now that’s all we are / Rolling real time autofiction / Reveries with avatars”).

So good, you wonder if the bar has been set too high for the remaining 10 songs, but somehow the pair find a way. Hide Your Fires, an Andy Stott inspired cut-up with an anthemic feel, juxtaposes the grim reality of growing older and all the pitfalls that come with it (“We’re never going back to the stars, I know / We corrode we implode but we can’t let go.“). Summer Season continues that reality with half-arsed proclamations stemming from generational disconnect, as the protagonist ends up in the very same bars that have been key to Arab Strap’s nihilistic streak. (“It’s summer season in the city / And everyone’s so fuckin’ pretty / And I drink on my own / If you want you can get me on the phone”).

On Haven’t You Heard, Moffat and Middleton continue to explore the dark corners previously exposed on Bliss. Through the lens of another female protagonist, she tries to grapple and make sense of this bourgeoning digital age (“Bruised and beaten and defend / Derided, bullied and slut shamed / Why do they always take it far too far / You wonder who and why the fuck you are”). Closing track Turn off the Light is equally fierce, with a frightening tale of a character consumed by the online world and the epic loneliness it can carry back into the real one (“Please come and help make sense of it all”).

Dragged Up Interview: “To us it just makes sense to get out there and play.”

Meanwhile, Dreg Queen is quintessential Arab Strap. That “classic banger we hadn’t heard in years” in all its thumping, electric glory. Moffat’s messaging is as morose as ever; this time via a lonely soul drowning in gloom while he chases the fleeting rush of euphoria offered through drink.

While some will see Turn Off the Light as the definitive moment of I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍, those plaudits are reserved for Safe and Well. A brutal, acoustic lament where the protagonist recounts his own death (“My last words unheard/ My cold hand un-held and “Hundreds of emails and messages left / I could not reply, and no flags were raised”). It’s one of the most poignant moments in the Arab Strap canon, exposing the cracks in a world that’s meant to be as connected as it’s ever been. Here Moffat and Middleton emphatically prove otherwise, underlining just how selfish and narcissistic we’ve become.

The questions have never been sharper, and the results have never been more definitive, and while online culture will never offer a watershed moment in our history, at the very least it can be the inspiration for one. Arab Strap’s I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore👍 is proof of that.

I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍is out now via Rock Action. Purchase from Bandcamp.