Review: Aiden Moffat - I Can Hear Your Heart (Chemikal Underground)

For my money Falkirk’s Aidan Moffat has been the best lyricist of the last decade, but it’s only with I Can Hear Your Heart, after ten years of collaborating with Malcolm Middleton as Arab Strap and putting out lush, wordless ambient albums as L. Pierre, that he’s graced us with a record where the focus is one hundred percent on his words.

There’s backing music and instrumental passages, but they’re effectively blank space for you to linger over Moffat’s compelling, clandestine poetry – contained both in the album’s songs and its accompanying short story. And despite Arab Strap’s final album ending on their most positive note yet, breaking up the band on a real feeling that everything will be alright, I Can Hear Your Heart is a familiar dip into the substance-filled sordidity of their earlier work. Most songs are recorded with minimal instrumentation and maximum background static, and adultery, humiliation, sex and death run through the album (‘Beak’ is horrifically beautiful, like Miike’s Audition), all discussed with the humility and candidness that has become Moffat’s trademark.