What were once vices are now habits. The Doobie Brothers said that. (Well, they named an album that.) (No, I don't own it, Skunk.) I bet the Scottish boys in Arab Strap have spent a few nights pissing in strange alleys at four in the morning, perhaps pondering the gist of this aphorism. They have a few habits themselves. For a handful of albums and singles over the last couple of years, the duo—Aidan Moffat on vocals, Malcolm Middleton on guitar—have been getting high and breaking their own hearts and staring at wallpaper in rooms of girls they've just met, of girls they've known since grade school, or of their own damn selves. They don't merely hint at the dark side of chemical love; they reveal it completely. Romance in the time of Ecstasy, according to Arab Strap, is a complicated and often mundane thing, spiked by moments of bursting out of... More >>>