Aidan John Moffat – I Can Hear Your Heart
Umm, wow. Hah, erm….
Well it’s…
Er, well, it’s kind of like… erm, well it’s fucking impossible to describe this, really.
No, right then. Well this album won’t ever be on sale in Walmart, that’s for sure. It’s one of the most depressing indicators of twenty-first century censorship, the way commercial interest can fuck with people’s artistic output without any of this pesky need for open debate. So artists tend to record a Walmart version to avoid their draconian ‘family policies’, that pander to the hypocritical shrieking of bovine rednecks for no other reason than to give them some outward scapegoat for their repressed self-loathing. Anyway, no such fucking around for Mr. Moffat. I actually don’t think this album would be recognisable if it were censored to an acceptable level. Walmart is, I believe, the biggest retailer of music in the States. How depressing.
Anyway, I Can Hear Your Heart. It’s a terrifying album, in many ways. Moffat is the ‘other one’, after Malcolm Middleton, from Arab Strap, who already had a penchant for brutally honest and jarringly direct tales of personal betrayal, and here that is taken to shocking extremes. I don’t think I shock easily, the cover to The Indelicates’ We Hate the Kids did it, but this album has managed it too. Honestly, I had to go back again and listen to it immediately, just to be sure that I’d really heard what I thought I had.
To say that this album tells tales of everyday betrayal, heartbreak, loneliness and inner turmoil would be not only a massive understatement, but it would also seem vaguely insulting. Yes it does those things, but it does them with such force that it’s fucking stunning. Literally, actually, stunning. There’s no way I can really explain it, I don’t think. He melds snippets of music, from the discordant to the traditional to the atmospheric, in and out of the poems and stories that make up the album. And it’s funny a lot of the time too.
These snippets of spoken word are all sorts, from surreal twists on Grease (“How did it work out for Sandy & Danny?/ Did she turn into a cow, did he turn into a fanny?”) to tales of infidelity from minor to major, to tales of sexual, erm politics I guess you’d call it, so explicit you draw breath. Surely no more explicit than your average rap record or porn flick, you ask, and you’d be right. No, no more explicit in terms of the things they describe, but this is all delivered in such a disquietingly casual, conversational way that all that contrived pantomime is stripped away, and you are left not with the adolescent fantasy of these sorts of situations, but the MFI-bedroom reality of imperfect human beings actually experiencing them.
The slight surreality of the music only makes the whole thing more discomfiting, more naked somehow. It may be a difficult album in many ways, and there is just no point putting it on unless you really are going to sit down and really listen to it all. But really, I’ve not heard anything much like this ever before. Of all the albums I will remember from this year there is no doubt this will be the one. It’s like a fucking sledgehammer of bare, twisted documentary. Explicit both in the naughty sense, and in the focus of its absolutely unflinching stare, all served with grey instant coffee in an IKEA mug under a neon strip-light. A startling, startling record.
Aidan John Moffat – Good Morning
Aidan John Moffat – The Boy That You Love
Aidan John Moffat – Album Excerpt This is a couple of songs thrown together to give you an idea how the album flows. This clip contains Nothing in Common, Hopelessly Devoted and Super Sexxy Real Live! in one file.
sheesh. on the strength of this, it’s moffat: one, middleton: nil.
also, forfar: four, hamilton academicals: three.
Depends, I suppose, on where you draw the intellectual achievement versus entertainment line in evaluating an artistic work.
Malky’s stuff is terrific, and far more listenable than this as a form of entertainment. This record is more of a ‘work’ if you know what I mean, making it perhaps ‘better’ in the grand artistic sense, but far less likely to appeal to most folk and probably less likely to be frequently played even on my own stereo. But I’ll probably find it far more rewarding on a ‘per listen’ basis when I do actually listen to it.
I was blown away by this. I agree that it is almost more art/poetry than a record per se – but there is just something about it. Like you Matthew, I had to listen to it again immediately after it finished – and in my opinion, anything that makes you do that, that makes you HAVE to listen to it again, has achieved something remarkable. Not many albums make me need to hear it again immediately. I think it is a fantastic, dark, dirty and highly intelligent piece of work.
Jesus Euan, if you’d emailed me that comment yesterday you could have saved me about five paragraphs!
sorry! he was actually at Neil Young last night and I was tempted to go speak to him and get him to sign something – but instead of an autograph (which I find sad and a little pathetic) I was going to ask him to write down the dirtiest thing he could think of for my wife! how messed up is that??! – that’s what his music does to you though! also, he has an amazing ability to sneak into a cue for the toilets, at the front, undetected, almost as if he was invisible and nobody noticed it happen. genius.
it’s not as ugly and explicit as all that is it?
i find some of this quite lovely.
some of it’s quite funny: i hate dirty dancing with a passion and apparently you hate words on the screen.
touching (not like that) in weird drunk scottish way.
maybe worryingly so.
maybe my head’s all wrong.
It’s not all ugly by any means, but there are times when it is very, very explicit. And when it is explicit he manages to do it in such a direct way that is at once intense and off-the-cuff that it really is quite shocking somehow.
But there are plenty of lovely, lovely moments on this album, both musically and lyrically. It’s superb, really. Give it a spin.
sorry. was a badly put rhetorical question. what i should have said was: i don’t find it as explicit or shocking as has been made out. i fear a lot of the reviews i’ve read might be putting people off buying it. it is very honest. and the springsteen cover’s ace!
I’ve not heard this, but I have a tickle in my belly that says I very much must.
I don’t disagree – there are some lovely moments on this album – that’s why I think it’s such an emotive and intelligent piece of work. He talks about shagging some other woman and then how he crawls back into his own bed trying not to wake his girlfirend who sleepily cuddles into him and says “I can hear your heart” – for me that just creates this amazing sense of guilt and betrayal whilst highlighting the innocence and beauty of love. I really felt how they must both have been feeling through his words. He reaches our own real emotions through his words. It’s quite disturbing how affected you become by his words – but that’s why I love it.
I’d agree, Euan, and about that track in particular. Something in the delivery is so completely bare that it hits home far harder than much else I can think of in a similar vein. The likes of Billy Bragg and David Gedge can conjure similar everyday betrayal with their words, but neither are quite so brutal and unflinching in their gaze. And the fact that these aren’t exactly ‘songs’ only exacerbates it.
Pure observation, not necessarily intended to cause a reaction:
No comments from your female readers on this yet. Hmm.
No, I know. To say it’s not a female-friendly album is not entirely accurate, I don’t think. I don’t think it’s at all anti-female, as such, it’s just written from such an intimately male perspective I can’t imagine women finding it much fun. Let me know if you find any exceptions though. What did you think about it yourself?
It’s not that’s it not fun – god knows (and Last FM testifies) that my music taste is more male than female – oriented. And I’ve been one of the few girls down the front at more gigs than I care to recall, including a fair few Arab Strap ones.
But I found this album a bit dull, to be honest. The distance for me isn’t about the male perspective, but more about how remote I feel from the level of self-indulgence that this album describes, I think. The whole album reminds of a bad Hanif Kureshi novel – not exactly misogynistic, more misanthropic and full of self-loathing. And, yes, self-indulgence – I’m a crap bloke, it’s horrendous, look at all these women out to tempt me in the big bad world, I can’t help myself and I hate myself for it – yawn.
If I want bittersweet and lovelorn, I’ll take it with a large dose of loud guitars (step in, Mr Gedge), or a larger dose of steel guitar (oh, how I love thee Mark Eitzel).
I sense a nerve may have been touched here.
I do know what you mean, in the sense that it a very self-indulgent record. Nevertheless what he achieves, in terms of physical emotional jolt, particularly with tracks like Good Morning still makes it something really worth listening to in my book.
And actually I find it musically really enjoyable as well. The cinematic undercurrents that occasionally build into a grand sweep really do it for me.
yes, I know what you mean too. Same shivers as Tindersticks.
They have a new album, don’t they? I’ve been told I have to listen to that.
Due out end of April, and yes, you must.
Brilliant, brilliant album Toad. Heard it on the weekend – just didn’t get the time to find an outlet to purchase; will rectify asap – & loved it. the other half of was banging on about Middleton’s new release & I asked him if he’d heard Moffat’s & he hadn’t. Luckily, those Prince Edward Island lot what put us up had a copy &, suffice, the other half of was somewhat taken aback by the starkness of it.
I love it, it’s right up my street.