Name: The Week Never Starts Round Here
Brand: Arab Strap

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

197204

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2019-09-13

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Revol­ver

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

852545003844

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Arab Strap

Genre US

Rock-Pop

Label US

1972

Arab Strap is an indie pop band hailing from Falkirk, Scotland. Formed in 1995, the band gained recognition for their unique blend of melancholic lyrics and atmospheric soundscapes. After a successful run until 2006, Arab Strap went on hiatus but reunited several times since then, with notable comebacks in 2011, 2016, and most recently in 2020. With their emotionally charged music and captivating performances, Arab Strap continues to captivate audiences worldwide.

The year 1996 saw the release of Arab Strap’s first single, “The First Big Weekend,” and debut album The Week Never Starts Round Here. Into an underground rock milieu preoccupied at the time with slo-core, math rock, and all things Pet Sounds, the duo of Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat couldn’t have sounded more alien.

In many ways, The Week Never Starts Round Here bears all the marks of a debut: it’s raw, unguarded, and crammed with ideas. It also firmly establishes the particular set-up that would define Arab Strap’s sound over the course of eleven years, with Middleton handling the music while Moffat provides the vocals and lyrics. Even this division of labor—more common to rap music than to the shoegazers and increasingly ubiquitous “collectives” of indie rock—seemed to defy expectations.

The sound of Arab Strap is a distinct brand of existential miserablism. Middleton’s cleverly arranged foundation of nocturnal guitars and rudimentary drum machines provides a canvas for Moffat to relay, in a thick Scottish dialect, his many sloshed, candid confessions. Long before artists like Mike Skinner chronicled the picaresque days of lads getting pissed and getting laid, Arab Strap’s vivid tales of lovers, lager and shame were being broadcast on college stations everywhere.

The Week Never Starts Round Here is an album full of drugged-up kisses and dried up egos; it chronicles the conquests and knockbacks of weekends that last forever, and it does so unapologetically, poetically, and profanely. Indie rock would never be the same.

The Week Never Starts Round Here

Music US