Splendid: So in comparison, your audience is much larger in Europe? Or at least in Scotland?

Aidan Moffat: I don't know if there's really a difference.

Splendid: Has one trip (through the States) been any different than the next? When you were opening for Bright Eyes, some people were coming to see you, but you were probably unknown to a majority of the audience. Do you get a sense that you converted some people and they came back to see you the next time around?

Malcolm Middleton: In Seattle, I think, that worked -- that was idea, to play to more people and a different sort of audience. But I don't think it worked, overall. It's not like the response was massive or there were huge audiences because of that.

Aidan Moffat: The album really didn't sell any more.

Malcolm Middleton: I kind of regret it. We did the Bright Eyes thing as a four-piece acoustic (band). I think if we'd done it with the band we have now it would have been more effective.

Splendid: So playing to the popular audience with an acoustic set didn't work as well... Malcolm, you're opening tonight's show on your own. Is that something you've been doing a lot?

Malcolm Middleton: I've been opening just on this tour, because my album just came out here a month or two ago.

Splendid: How was it touring through America with the word "Arab" in your name?

Aidan Moffat: I'm sure there are many stupid people who may read the name, and think that... well, whatever stupid people think. It's not as if we've got it on the cases going through the airport. That would be good fun, I suppose, to go through the airport with our cases. No, that's not us.

Malcolm Middleton: Nothing's happened because of the name.

Splendid: I thought that maybe, at least in America, once people found out what an Arab Strap was, that would become the more offensive thing.

Aidan Moffat: Ha ha.

Splendid: Here in America it seems everyone is very conservative when comes to anything to do with sex.

Aidan Moffat: I don't know, there's a couple guys in the band who seemed to have met some people who were very open-minded about that sort of thing.

Splendid: Probably in San Francisco.

Aidan Moffat: (laughing) Actually it was in San Francisco.

Splendid: After three tours in the last six months, are you sick of Monday at the Hug and Pint yet?

Malcolm Middleton: Umm...yeah.

Aidan Moffat: I don't know if I'm sick of the album. That's the thing, I haven't listened to it since it came out, unless it was for reference. I don't know, I'm hoping when I go home and listen to it, I'll be able to enjoy it as much as I did before. You do get tired, though.

Malcolm Middleton: It's good when you start out (on tour); you can basically expand the songs, try something different, and after so many dates, maybe a month or something, you get to that point where it's like, "Well, we can't do anything" and after it's just repetition. It's still comforting.

Splendid: Do you do anything to try to keep them fresh, or like you said, you expand them until you reach a point and then after that it's always the same? Like you've achieved the perfect take?

Malcolm Middleton: It's just got to be as tight as we can -- the perfect take, yeah.

Splendid: Have any songs held up better than others -- gotten better?

Aidan Moffat: I think they've expanded very well. I always prefer the older ones; there's a song off the first album that I really enjoy doing, I like it when we can do older one and make them better. A song called "Blood", for instance, it sounds really, really good live, and it's become better than it used to be. If we do things like that, it's only with the older songs. That's what I enjoy.

Splendid: I haven't heard the live album you just put out, The Cunted Circus, but it looks like the set list is pretty close to what's on Monday at the Hug and Pint. Are the versions that different?

Aidan Moffat: Aye. It was a different set-up. It was when we did the acoustic thing, so it was just an acoustic guitar and cello or violin and pedal steels.

Splendid: A completely different arrangement?

Aidan Moffat: Aye. It was good, because, you know, the songs, if they can hold up with that sort of minimal instrumentation... So true, there is some value (in The Cunted Circus).

Splendid: To me, Monday at the Hug and Pint seems more rejoiceful and more at ease with itself than your earlier work, at least compared to The Red Thread. Did taking time off and doing solo albums have anything to do with that? I thought The Red Thread was very tense, whereas on this one you've got a song like "The Week Never Starts Around Here" saying, "enjoy it while you can 'cause it won't last long." It sounds like you're more at ease and more relaxed. I didn't hear that on the previous albums.

Aidan Moffat: Doing our own records certainly helped. If we started a new record before, without a break, I think it would have been fucking terrible. The Red Thread is a very dark record and you can hear the tension as well. Because we went back to Chemikal Underground for that record, I was a little nervous about it. The new one I think we were just happy to be making a record again. It was a lot more fun... The studio atmosphere was kind of like the first album. It was fun again. It's not a comedy record by any stretch of the imagination, but there's a lot more touches in it that might suggest that we're enjoying ourselves.

Malcolm Middleton: I think it's a fact as well. We've done four albums before, and by the time we did the fourth one it was becoming more like the same cycle do an album and tour, do another album and tour. So talking about a break, by the time we went back to do Monday at the Hug and Pint we were looking forward to it -- excited about it, rather than it being a chore.

Splendid: Arab Strap was lucky -- their very first single ("First Big Weekend") got great reviews, great press. Has that been difficult as you career went on? Is it something that you feel you're still under the shadow of, and have certain expectations because of?

Malcolm Middleton: I don't think so because that song was unlike anything we'd ever done. That was like when we were recorded the first album -- that wasn't even on it. We recorded it after. Then we (later) put it on the album as well. And it wasn't so successful; it did well by our standards, but it's not like it was so big that we could live off of what it earned.

Splendid: You keep touching on some of the same themes, or at least the words from your first album (The Week Never Starts Around Here). In "Turbulence" you talk about that "big weekend", and you do the same in "The Week Never Starts Around Here" -- the song, not the album. Is there a conscious effort to use the recurring themes, or do you just like the words?

Aidan Moffat: I suppose. We're a band that was born from a heavy weekend -- the night we first met and started making music -- so I think that probably just stuck with us. To that point of view, I write things after the fact and they always tend to be about mistakes, I suppose, and naturally you make most mistakes when you've had a few too many. It's probably more interesting to write about something that's actually been an event rather than, say, what we did last night.

Splendid: You mention mistakes, and learning from the past. You guys have a reputation as a hard drinking, hard partying, kind of weekend thing. Is that something that you still do on the road? Is it something that stuck with you or is it something that, as you hit thirty, starts to change?

Aidan Moffat: I don't have as much fun as I used to. I'm not saying it's wrong, I just don't have the energy. Monday at the Hug and Pint is, in a sense, the end as well. If you listen to the five albums, I think they tell a very good story from our point of view, and it ends really beautifully. I think I'd like to try something new in the future. I don't know what I'd write about, but I've tried to set myself goals. I'm not going to mention drugs or drink; that means I either do sex songs or I'm completely useless. I don't know, I'm trying to get away from that, I think it's pretty much over. I don't really like to repeat myself. Your fans are always going to mourn if you make too many changes.

Splendid: I think there's been a progression in style from one album to the next, but you've kept that "Arab Strap" theme, so there's a familiar pattern, even if you move in a slightly different direction.

Aidan Moffat: We'll see what happens. I don't really know, but I set myself rules so I should obey them.

Splendid: Do you think any of the changes are due to cultural changes that have been taking place over the last few years? 1996 and '97 was a much different world than now; people seem more uptight and paranoid today, whereas in '96 people were more apt to be a little freer -- taking pills, going to raves, losing themselves a bit more. That does still exist, but it's not as popular as it was a few years ago.

Aidan Moffat: The thing about that is it's very easy to separate yourself in your world if you want, and that's in a sense what any good song is, and the idea of Monday at the Hug and Pint, sort of. It's easy to get locked into a lifestyle where nothing really matters except going out an enjoying yourself -- it's a very shallow existence, I think. I think people would probably think the same thing, I don't think it's necessarily what's happened in those years; more that it's what we choose to put in our songs.

Splendid: Setting an atmosphere plays an important role in your lyrics. Is that something that you do consciously, perhaps picked up from an certain author, or does it happen to be your voice and that's the way it comes out?

Aidan Moffat: I think so. I've always just tried to write naturally as I speak. Well, that's not necessarily true. On the new album, I put a little more effort into the words. Before that it was just, I'd think what would rhyme with cock. But I just put a lot more effort into it now. It depends what I hear. Malcolm will give me a song and I'll hear the music and things in it and that may dictate what a song may be about. It may remind me of some certain atmosphere... Like "The Shy Retirer", for instance -- we had the music done long before I got my hands on it. To me it was going to bit about a disco and, I suppose, going out and taking drugs, you know. So it depends; the music has more to do with the atmosphere.

Splendid: Malcolm, do you come up with the music first in every instance?

Malcolm Middleton: I usually write the tunes, but Aidan does some as well -- like he came up with the beginning of "Loch Leven" three years ago on keyboard. It's usually done separately; I prepare a tape and Aidan will listen to it and get ideas as to what lyrics will go with which song.

Splendid: Do you rehearse them together while you're recording, or do you wait to play them together until there's a finished product?

Malcolm Middleton: It's usually just work in the studio and see what happens. And we've been quite lucky -- we've never recorded a song we hate.

Aidan Moffat: We did do it a bit with the new album, and I think it shows. The songs are a lot stronger; we actually played some of them live. It's what we should do again, at least make demos and have an idea going in. Even Malcolm had sent me some songs that came in a package that I could be singing at home with the tape. I think it gave a much stronger idea to what we were going to do.

Splendid: So you've got two nights left of your tour, and then it's back home for the holidays. I bet you can't wait.

Aidan Moffat: I'm looking forward to going home. I'm not looking forward to Christmas, but I'm looking forward to going home.

Splendid: Are you going to do any gigs while you're home, or is it just taking a break?

Malcolm Middleton: We've got one is Glasgow in January, and then we'll try and get some more European gigs in February.

Aidan Moffat: We have to keep the momentum going. We can't just take a few months off and do it again, because by that point we'll really hate the fucking songs. Then we'll start thinking about our new ones.

Splendid: Have you started working on anything new? Or is that still off in the future?

Malcolm Middleton: I usually don't do anything on tour -- just playing guitar all of the time, you just beat yourself up, you just want to get away.

Aidan Moffat: Like Malcolm says, it's the last thing you want to do when you get time to yourself. I don't really feel like writing a song. Maybe a couple here. As I say, because we drink all the time, it's always the same fucking things. We're going to have to dump them.