Arab Strap – Live Review – Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds
By David Schuster, October 2026
Arab Strap bring an additional dynamic to their live performances. Don’t misunderstand me, their last album, Half Told Tales, is a truly great and evocative record, but there’s a subtle shift in the experience. Akin to the difference between HD and UHD video, there’s an additional energy to seeing them perform the songs live. So, when vocalist Aidan Moffat growls the refrain of the opening number, “I’ve got you, you, you, you”, you can see and feel, as well as hear, the different enunciation of each of the repeated words.
That dynamic is really quite something when you consider that the band have been around, off and on, for 30 years. Later in the set, Moffat mentions this, asking, “Did anybody here see us back in the 90s?”. A few tentative hands go up in the audience. “We were sh*t back then, weren’t we?”, he laughs. I’d already seen that self-effacing humour reflected on the merchandise stall, where tote bags for sale proudly proclaimed, ‘I’ve been listening to Arab Strap for thirty f*cking years’.
“Timely warning”
Over those decades, Moffat and multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton, have produced nine studio albums. It’s a significant body of material, from which they draw a varied set list. About a third of the tracks are drawn from this year’s Half Told Tales. These include ‘I Get Noise’ a much needed diatribe against the constant intrusion of social media, when all you want or need mentally is silence and time to think. Then there’s ‘Fighting For You’, a timely warning of the realities of war, with the lyrics, “I read today of glory times, the joys of yesteryear. But I remember watching Threads and growing up in fear.”, and ‘Glamour Magick’ a more tongue-in-cheek dig at the beauty industry.
There’s also a good range of older tracks: a personal favourite is the aggressively titled ‘F*cking Little B*stards’. This starts as a full-on sonic assault of gated noise guitar backed by a floor tom beat. The noise then mutates into something much more melodic, eventually clearing to a drum beat and strings. It’s reminiscent of, but cleverer than, fellow scots The Jesus and Mary Chain at their best. Let’s face it, with that title it was never going to get much radio play. ‘The Fable of the Urban Fox’ is, on the face of it, an observation that there’s no such thing. They’re here because we drove them out of the countryside. However, it’s also a sharp metaphor for migration; most migrants don’t choose to leave their homelands, they do so because they are driven to by political, economic or physical pressures.
“Powerful”
Normally I’m a big fan of the Howard Assembly Rooms and I’ve seen a lot of artists grace the slightly gentile setting of its honey-pine clad main hall. However, these have all been seated gigs. For whatever reason though, tonight the venue was all standing, and that served the band badly. The stage isn’t high enough for a standing audience. I’m six feet two, and all I could see were the heads and shoulders of the musician, whilst my wife couldn’t see the stage at all. Compounding this, the venue had also chosen to put a bar in the main hall, just in front of the mixing desk. There was therefore a constant background distraction throughout the show.
Despite these small annoyances, it was still a very enjoyable evening. They conclude the main set with ‘Fragments’, the song from which the title of the latest album, and this tour, are taken. It’s the recognition of realising that friends and relatives can often die before their stories are complete, “Leaving fragments, sketches, half-told tales.” Powerful stuff, but Arab Strap are at their very best when they are telling stories that the majority of us can relate to. They wisely finish the evening with the much more upbeat ‘The First Big Weekend’. The lyrics read like an amalgamation of all my wilder nights out with friends in my early twenties and, looking around, I can see that’s true for many of the audience. It’s simple but effective magic.
images: Gail Schuster
David Schuster describes himself as an “adventurer, collector, musician and writer. Not necessarily in that order.” Growing up west of the Pennine hills of the UK and living his adult life east of them, he’s inclined to think that the Wars of the Roses were a mistake. David loves discovering new bands and musicians and is happiest listening to live music. He has travelled extensively in the UK and is fascinated by the variety, history and landscapes of the thousands of islands that comprise the British Isles. David is always reassured when online shops confirm that he’s not a robot.
