I should get one thing clear right from the start, Aidan Moffat is my hero. Any man who can live life so removed from any consideration towards such irrelevances as trend, commercialism, and style deserves, in my book at least, to be treated as such.
His ‘to hell with it’ attitude has resulted in a catalog of musical gems that will stand the test of time because of the very fact that they are endearingly unfashionable. In another age Aidan would have been a poet, a larger than life and rather controversial Scottish bard.
Today there wouldn’t be a pub in Glasgow that didn’t have a ‘Moffat sat there’ chair, or a sign saying that ‘Moffat fell off that stool.’ ‘Moffat Night’ would be a great occasion of singing, drinking, poetry, and recital. Now with How To Get To Heaven From Scotland he has surprisingly introduced an altogether more upbeat flavor to help the night along.
His career as part of The Angry Buddhists and, most notably, as one half of Arab Strap produced enough material to keep ‘Moffat Night’ afloat for many a year. His subsequent journey as Lucky Pierre, plain old L.Pierre, The Sick Anchors, and now Aidan Moffat & The Best Ofs just add more and more possibilities to the catalog.
Musically Aidan does just what the hell he likes. That’s not in any way as arrogant as it sounds. All that it means is, when Aidan wakes up one morning and decides he wants to do a spoken word album set around his view of life, then he will. His last album I Can Hear Your Heart was exactly that. As a result he is all the stronger, and we are the beneficiaries, from his lack of slavery to trend.
Now Aidan has formed The Best-Ofs, a sort of part time, almost ad-hoc collaboration including Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai. For this latest album How To Get To Heaven From Scotland (Chemikal Underground Records) we meet an altogether brighter, less world weary, dare I say content sounding Moffat from the one we know and love of old.
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