Bill Wells And Aidan Moffat - Everything's Getting Older Album Review

The extent to which former Arab Strap vocalist Aidan Moffat's lyrics are rooted in personal experiences has never been entirely clear to me. He always sounds like he's confessing his deepest personal secrets directly to the listener: his words are brutal and unchecked accounts of failed relationships, meaningless sex and alcohol dependency. It's possible, though, that he's instead developing a persona: he's writing songs from the perspective of a particular character, the drunk regular sitting at the bar, gulping down his whiskey and telling anyone who'll listen slightly more than they want to know.

Does this matter? Perhaps not, although I rather hope that Moffat's tales are inspired by creative writing classes rather than personal experience, because songs like 'Ballad of the Bastard', from his new album with experimental jazz composer Bill Wells, hardly inspire sympathy with their protagonist. 'You should have killed me there, right where I stood/when I casually confessed that I was up to no good', he sings, channelling his usual mixture of self-pity and self-righteousness as he reflects on another doomed attempt at a lasting relationship. 'Well I assured you there that I could change my ways/and I think it might have lasted for a couple of days'. At moments like this, it's difficult to know whether to applaud Moffat's honesty (if, indeed, he is being honest) or shrink from what he's saying; it's uncomfortable listening.

Everything's Getting Older does offer some departures from the usual lyrical themes. It is, broadly speaking, a series of reflections on the experience of getting older, and while many of the emotions Moffat associates with this will be familiar to long-time listeners (hopelessness, shame, regret, you know the score), there are some unexpected twists: the protagonist of 'Cages' lapses into a comfortable acceptance of the confines of married life. Even when he's on more familiar ground, Moffat is capable of tossing out some interesting turns of phrase; he sings of a quiet night in the pub being followed by 'a more spirited attempt to forget who he was'.

The album is built around these lyrics. Moffat's voice, with its gruff Scottish accent, dominates proceedings, while Wells is largely content to remain in the background, providing a respectful backdrop to the tales of woe. His piano-playing drifts along, contemplative and unobtrusive, on tracks like the sombre 'The Copper Top' ('I suppose they must be used to mourners in the pub closest to the crematorium'), and dovetails nicely with skittish drums and double bass during 'Tasogare'. The funereal pace and mood of the record is alleviated slightly by the relatively spirited single '(If You) Keep Me In Your Heart', which features Belle & Sebastian's Stevie Jackson on guitar and former B&S member Isobell Campbell on cello, and by the faintly Steve Reich-ish 'Cages'.

It's an album which will appeal to fans of Moffat's distinctive words and subject matter, and those with a taste for the maudlin. At times, however, the record's pace is too slow and its lyrics too self-consciously bleak, and during those moments it's tempting to turn the thing off and put on something more positive, just to remind yourself that, whatever these two may think, life doesn't have to be all about failure and depression.

Nick Gale