It’s my first time in Edinburgh’s La Belle Angele, but not my first seeing Arab Strap. But it is perhaps the band that surprises me more than the venue.

It is rare for a band that is able to produce a work that can seriously be considered among their best, and not something that allows them an excuse to cash in on a tour where they have to play the hits - Arab Strap, however, have managed to do just that.

Almost 30 years after that first big weekend, I'm Totally Fine with It Don't Give a F*** Anymore is an album full of fresh ideas and with a seemingly continuing vigour to evolve their sound. That freshness has extended on to their live shows.

In the relatively small confines of Edinburgh’s La Belle Angele, the band are musically dynamic and lyrically as brutal as they potentially ever have been. Opening with a double hit of new tunes in Allatonceness and Bliss before launching into a selection from 2021’s As Days Get Dark and their pre-split albums. It is their latest release, of course, that takes pride of place - and there wouldn’t be many shouts to “just play the hits” given how good they sound tonight.

This is a band that can manipulate its audience like a marionette, pulling them this way and that before stopping the dead in their tracks. This is no more apparent than on tonight’s performance of Girls of Summer. The 1997 track has always held pride of place in the pantheon of Arab Strap live performances I’ve seen, but this is on another level.

Arab Strap wow the crowd at La Belle Angele | National World

placeholder image — Arab Strap wow the crowd at La Belle Angele | National World

It is guitarist Malcolm Middleton’s time to shine as they expertly build up to a song that feels like it wouldn’t have been amiss at whatever club they stumbled around in before stopping it dead and pulling you right back to that feeling of waking up hungover.

They have always been a band that have been able to perfectly articulate the song, the songs they have written about Arab Strap songs are the cinematic glimpse into the lives of once youthful Scottish men and women as they now enter middle age, the lyrics the script and the music the soundtrack.

Possibly the biggest compliment I can give Arab Strap is that there is never an appetite to move on from these new songs, and around 10 of an 18 song set come from that new album. They have managed what few bands do, and that is make the here and now as appealing as the nostalgia.

Moffat and Middleton have never really been of the norm, and in so many ways this show highlights that fact.