ARAB STRAP - Half-Told Tales (2026)
A fucking album that sounds exactly like an album should sound. GREAT songs, sharp sounds, defined, clean. Honesty and beauty.
When things are done this well, interpretation almost becomes pointless. Any comment feels unnecessary, including these few lines. But I like it so much that I want to write them anyway.
It’s a beautiful album. All of it.
Sometimes — increasingly rarely — you hear something and its identity is immediately there, clear and unmistakable from the very beginning. Empty rhetoric, maybe, but it’s true: when you love a band, part of what you hope for is something that makes you recognise them instantly, something that brings back sensations you already know without simply repeating the past.
And fuck, how deeply songs become attached to moments in our lives.
One song on this record, in particular, will stay with me for years to come.