Audio Mixer: Geoff Allan.

Recording information: Cava; Seven-A.

Unknown Contributor Roles: Jenny Reeve; Charlie Clarke; Willie Campbell; Alan Wylie; John Mauchline; Stacey Seivewright; Mike Mogis; Barry Burns; Bill Wells; Conor Oberst.

By the time they reunited to record 2003's Monday AT THE HUG & PINT after getting their respective solo albums out of their systems, Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton's dystopian lyrical vision of their Scottish surroundings was fully realized. The band's musical self assurance is in direct contrast to its unrelentingly stark subject matter: in Arab Strap country, joy is fleeting, emotional pain is a constant companion, and it's always raining. But the band's music is often disconcertingly sweet, as in the pastoral-sounding "Loch Leven," while "Glue," where Moffat sings in characteristically enervated fashion about the dangers of love without sex, has an almost ambient feel, leavening the song's unblinking realism.