Aidan John Moffat
I Can Hear Your Heart
Chemikal Underground
‘Fuck.. Cock.. Shag.. Willie’; it’s all there in ‘I can hear your heart’. A fine distillation of the Scottish lexicon or, alternatively, the Scot’s default reaction to life; swearing.
After Moffat’s introductory voice over, explaining the concept behind the two-part album, ‘Poop’ and ‘Loop’ [Poop, a short story and Loop?????], it all starts ominously enough. A growling voice intoning, ‘I can hear your heart’, which a first listen had me convinced was saying; ‘I can hear you fuck’.
My mishearing turned out to be a premonition of what was to come. A kind colleague suggested playing the album over dinner with my girlfriend, an experience I will not be repeating. I don’t know which level of hell Moffat will be consigned to after this album, but I guess he’ll be nursing a few exotic STDs amidst the flames; Think of Tom Waits crossed with Rab C Nesbitt and Michael Douglas. Pre the treatment he received for his addiction to sex.
It’s not entirely accurate to call this an album, more a collection of poems, accompanied by music. And it’s not entirely accurate to evoke the traditional idea of poems either when what we’re dealing with is a kind of urban ode to casual sex and squalid romance. Moffat is the inebriated protagonist, guiding us across the streets of a Glasgow slicked in alcohol. There’s (frequent) cheating on his girlfriends; borderline sex with a minor; bagpipes; music hall sing-alongs and collapsed nights in bus shelters. There are threesomes; dirty panties: prank phone-calls and an expose of racist abuse. Involving a lot of racist abuse. It ain’t pretty. In fact, like last night’s dirty ashtray, I don’t see myself returning to this collection enthusiastically.
On the other hand it is occasionally very funny, structurally imaginative and the orchestral sampling is often mesemeric in a manner reminiscent of Moffat’s alter ego, Lucky Pierre. These gentle musical themes make a poignant contrast to Moffat’s potty mouth as he mournfully lists last night’s soiled conquests and there are glimpses of real tenderness and loss gleaming amidst the horrors of his tale.
Overall it’s a nihilistic experience. When Moffat finds himself doing a lugubrious cover of Springsteen’s ‘A Hungry Heart’, you are glad of the musical coherence. But it didn’t leave me begging for more.
Three stars? Again? For swearing. Three stars for swearing.
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