Aidan Moffat and the Best-Ofs
(Chemikal Underground)
Aidan Moffat calls How to Get To Heaven From Scotland his Valentine's Day album, but that's a touch misleading. The former Arab Strap frontman is a lover, perhaps, but never a hearts-and-flowers romantic. His beery, brooding love songs not the least idealistic, but infused with rueful admissions of failure and occasional violence. "Living with You Now," for instance, opens with this cozy domestic scenario: "You punched me in the ear/so I threw you on the bed/you slammed against the glass of the front door/I kicked a table into bits and threw a grapefruit at your head." Still, he reassures his battered better half, "I have never, I have never loved you more."
Moffat couches his most sardonic songs in pub-crusty traditionalism, backed by a pick-up ensemble of Stevie Jones, who has played with Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, and Alun Woodward from the Delgados. There's an accordion wheezing through the group shouts and whistles of "Oh Men!", a thudding Celtic drum in the background. The sentiment, though, is entirely modern. It's sort of a musical take on Men Are From Mars when Moffat observes, "You think we're all the same/I think there's few exceptions/yes, we all love to lech/we're slaves to our erections."
Yet for all the profanity, the drinking, the burnt-black sarcasm, and the stories that hint at how Moffat got cynical, you have a sense of happy ending. "A Scenic Route to the Isle of Ewe" is flat-out lovely, bruised and hushed and sublimely hopeful. And later, on "Lullaby for an Unborn Child", Moffat turns downright tender, recounting the world's harshness, then murmuring, "If you need me, just knock on the wall of your womb." Moffat has evidently taken some detours on his way to heaven, but he has gotten there all the same.
Standout Tracks: "A Scenic Route to the Isle of Ewe", "Big Blonde" "Oh Men!" JENNIFER KELLY
