ARAB STRAP The Week Never Starts Round Here (Chemikal Underground)

I must’ve heard about two minutes of the single "The First Big Weekend" before deciding that the debut album from Scottish beat ensemble Arab Strap was for me: imagine Irvine Welsh reborn as a D.I.Y. electronic punk band rewriting Pulp’s "Inside Susan", stuffed full of incisive observations on dole-, drink- and drug-fuelled hedonism, as well as surely being the first song to mention "The Simpsons" that wasn’t actually by them, it’s an instant classic of its type, whatever that type may be.

"The Week Never Starts Round Here" shackles it to another 45 minutes of largely slo-mo angst rock "Trainspotting" style, frequently abusive, occasionally scabrously funny, the best bits being far too inappropriate to quote in a family publication such as this, of course, although track titles such as "I Work In A Saloon", "General Plea To A Girlfriend" and "Kate Moss" might help you imagine the right ballpark. Maybe the rather obvious anti-production ethics can be a bit unremitting - even the lyrics admit the album’s (back) bedroom origins, and the combination of acoustic guitars and third-hand drum machine can not be said to remain fresh and inventive over the course of an entire album. But "The First Big Weekend" makes up for an awful lot, the happy sound of bright young Britain bombed out of its box.

ARAB STRAP Philophobia (Chemikal Underground)

"Philophobia" (it means a fear of falling in love) is the second album from the self-effacing Falkirk duo of Malcolm Middleton (most things musical) and Aidan Moffatt (most things not), and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s not exactly "Listen With Mother" material. The cover is the first warning shot: on the front there’s a painting of a (naked) ex-girlfriend of Moffatt’s (allegedly), and on the back a painting of the naked Moffatt himself - kind of like the sleeve of John & Yoko’s "Two Virgins", but not that much. Further clues can be gleaned from the song titles, which include "Packs Of Three", "New Birds" and "The First Time You’re Unfaithful". And their name is apparently derived from that given to ‘a device for sustaining flagging erections’, which I suspect is not a building term.

Unlike their debut album, "The Week Never Starts Around Here", which was more of a magical mystery tour through the hedonistic headrush of young people today, providing the music to a Guinness ad in the process, "Philophobia" is pretty much centred exclusively around sex, with the odd diversion through the stamping grounds of doomed or dying relationships for a little light, uh, relief. It’s not pretty, and, as Moffatt’s vocal technique is more one of recitation rather than singing, not overburdened with melody either. But his field reports from the battle of the sexes, obtained at what cost to himself and others we don’t know (although interviews suggest there’s an uncomfortably high proportion of his own life documented in these songs), are scarily observant and often scabrously funny. Sometimes, namely on "Islands", Eno ambience and Confucian wisdom collide to create a thing of almost accidental beauty.

Irrespective of whether anybody does it better, nobody does it like Arab Strap, evidenced by their habit of frequently being at the scene of third-party musical excellence (e.g. Moffatt’s guest spot on the Mogwai album, and their remix of David Holmes’ "The Holiday Girl"). And even if you don’t like the music, you can always read the ‘lyrics’, presented on the inner sleeves as if chapters of a book.

ARAB STRAP Mad For Sadness (Go! Beat)

"Mad For Sadness" is a recording of a 1998 London concert, and their first release for new taskmasters Go! Beat (rather an inappropriate choice of label, perhaps, as, whatever qualities Arab Strap’s music may possess, ‘go’ and ‘beat’ are not prominent amongst them). Aidan Moffat still mooches about like the winner of an all-Falkirk Charles Bukowski impersonators competition, a man mumbling through ever-deeper waters of alcohol-fuelled autodestructive relationships, all catalogued on record with a directness and candour that swings between voyeuristic and painful – the first line on the album is "I pulled the ex last night", and it’s pretty much downhill all the way from then on. It is unlikely that the toilet circuit will ever become flooded with a glut of Arab Strap copyist bands, put it that way.

Nevertheless, "Mad For Sadness" isn’t an entire hour of relentlessly downbeat doom and gloom, not quite. Played live, with more of a traditional band backing than the synthesised arrangements that predominate on record, these songs lose a few degrees’ worth of chilly detachment and, at times, verge on the human, if not humane, especially when the lighter counterpoint of Adele Bethel’s vocals pipe up on "Toy Fights" and "Afterwards". The real revelatory moments, however, are when Aidan slopes off for a beer and the band lock into a splenetic Slint/Mogwai-esque hurricane of noise, above which Malcolm Middleton demonstrates hitherto unexpected claims to the title of post-rock’s Hendrix, all sheets of guitar noise squeezed out through layers of feedback and effects – check out the middle section of "Girls Of Summer" for conclusive evidence.

Whether Arab Strap’s dalliance with The Man will make them household names yet is open to debate. The suspicion that they’ve already had their fifteen minutes’ worth with the use of their finest moment "The First Big Weekend" on a Guinness advert is hard to eradicate, especially as said crowd pleaser is conspicuously absent from this album. But their rebirth as post-rock monsters of sexual misery would be a trick worth seeing.

ARAB STRAP Elephant Shoe (Go! Beat)

Billed as the band's 'happy album', Arab Strap's third studio album offers no new tricks we haven't heard them before, and in some ways demonstrates even less than we've come to expect of the glum Falkirk duo. The cover art takes Aidan Moffat's girlfriend as its subject once again (photographed clothed, unlike the cover of "Philophobia" which featured a painting of her naked), and sports a "Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics" sticker, even though said lyrics are no more explicit than before.

Perhaps said sticker should have read "Parental Advisory Tedious Music", because "Elephant Shoe" seems like a long way to spend an hour. The spark of originality that occasionally flickered behind Arab Strap's DIY slow motion sadcore (revisit the Guinness advert soundtrack "The First Big Weekend", or the Mogwai-like sheets of guitar noise that power the live version of "The Girls Of Summer" for further evidence) has been completely extinguished, and save the tinkly piano like that trickles through recent single "Cherubs" nothing of a musical nature lodges in the memory. What makes this even more of a shame is that Aidan Moffat is now writing some of the most direct and honest (even by Arab Strap's unblushing standards) lyrics of his career - check out the chorus of "Autumnul", with the line "We've already named the seeds I'll be sowing", or the entirety of "Pro-(Your)Life". Painful as it is to relate, "Elephant Shoe" (the title derived from a phrase that, when mouthed silently, can be lip-read as "I love you") makes for a more entertaining read than listen.