ARAB STRAP

The Last Romance

(Transdreamer)

It was bound to happen. After a decade as indie rock's resident expert on the sort of beer-goggled relationships that blossom at last call, Aidan Moffat finally seems ready for a romantic stand that lasts longer than one night. Throughout much of Arab Strap's superb sixth album, The Last Romance, the vocalist suddenly seems intoxicated by love, not in love only when he's intoxicated: "If you can love my growing gut, my rotten teeth and graying hair / Then I can guarantee I'll do the same as long as you can bear," Moffat promises in the uncharacteristically uplifting "There Is No Ending." In "Speed-Date" he sounds genuinely shocked — as his fans will undoubtedly be — that he no longer sees monogamy as a death sentence.

Thanks to multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton, Arab Strap sounds like it's turned a corner musically as well. Beefing up its arrangements with horns and strings — and, thankfully, ditching the rinky-dink drum machines that marred previous recordings — the Scottish duo's songs are bigger, better, and more urgent than anything they've done. The lo-fi grandeur of "Come around and Love Me" and "Dream Sequence" somehow makes Moffat sound more vulnerable, while he's at his most earnest in the cello-laden "Confessions of a Big Brother," offering words of wisdom about his former love-'em-and-leave-'em approach to women. "Even though you're certain that it's just a bit of fun / You'll soon get sick of microwaving low-fat meals for one," he sings, speaking the harsh truth of aging, commitment-phobic hipsters everywhere. (Jimmy Draper)

ARAB STRAP

Mar. 24–25, 9 p.m.

Café du Nord

2170 Market, SF

$14–$16

(415) 861-5016

MALABY, SANCHEZ, RAINEY

Alive in Brooklyn Vol. 2

(Sarama)

This tenor saxophone, Wurlitzer, and drum trio's album is a true gem of modern "improvised" music. On this, the second volume of their Alive in Brooklyn series, they deliver some of the best music the oeuvre has to offer. The four songs on this recording form a compelling and satisfying hour of music, maintaining a consistent vantage point while holding the listener's interest with subtle variation and attention to detail.

The music is largely if not completely improvised, though improvised compositionally, as if the trio were spontaneously creating fully composed pieces complete with logical forms and structures rather than producing a series of random and unconnected sounds. These three highly accomplished musicians find the elusive, ideal balance between individual expression and collective communication, with an emphasis on mood and texture rather than on notes and solos. They do not force or impose their will on the music; they let it unfold naturally in the interplay, and spaces, between them. Comparisons to other current ensembles would be misleading; the sonic and musical world this group inhabits is all its own.

Tony Malaby's gorgeous and haunting saxophone tone is very personal: He belongs to that class of instrumentalists who can easily be identified with just one note yet can adopt their unique approach to various musical environments. Electric pianist Angelica Sanchez and drummer Tom Rainey will ruminate on a pitch set or texture, or Sanchez will subtly introduce a vamp that lifts the trio into time. Sanchez's and Rainey's interaction in these moments is remarkable, as they evoke their own version of traditional rhythm-section interplay without resorting to stereotypical funk or rock grooves.

If only more attempts at "spontaneous composition" reached the heights of this trio. This is improvised music not just for aficionados but for all music lovers. (Devin Hoff)

TERRESTRIAL TONES

Dead Drunk

(Paw Tracks)

Terrestrial Tones is the abominable hybrid of creepy whirrs and scraping gutter noise that have been snorkeling around in the brain juices of Black Dice's Eric Copeland and Animal Collective's Dave Porter. The pair selects fragmented jigsaw-puzzle pieces from each of its bands' respective catalogs and assembles them in a playful yet fucked-up fashion, wedging the frightening bleeps and glitches of Creature Comforts into the soupy, psychedelic freakiness of Danse Manatee. What results sounds like a haunting world folded in half — schizo pop and lethargic transmissions run down the center crease in droplets of poisoned foam.

Dead Drunk, the band's third album, will please fans of BD or AC — it's a tasty treat to snack on for those of you who can't get enough of the freak-folk eruption squirreling about in the experimental underground these days. Copeland and Porter scrounge up analog pedals, samplers, and electronic components and wrap the heaping mechanical ball with duct tape, then stuff it into the iron jaws of a food processor and watch as it regurgitates the mess in rubbery puddles of vomit. Each plays off the other's influences in a cohesive manner, and together they build a wall of sound from the ground up, processing a minimal sample, then decorating it with sonic melodies and buzzing feedback that fluctuates and tapers off into an intoxicating abyss. If you can handle the gritty loops of Middle Eastern synths, moaning vocals, and insectlike percussion of "The Sailor," then the rest of Dead Drunk will be a cakewalk for those with sensitive ears. (Chris Sabbath)