Aidan John Moffat: I Can Hear Your Heart : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

There's something about dirty talk delivered with a Scottish accent that sounds, well, even dirtier. Aidan John Moffat, who has released solo records under the name L. Pierre and was the vocal half of the defunct Scottish indie-rock duo Arab Strap, exploits this phenomenon on this disc: a rambling, literary semimemoir involving tales about a damaged relationship recited over garage-sale-LP samples and other sullen backdrops. As you might expect from a dude whose previous band was named after a cock ring, sex is a primary concern of the record; call it Portrait of the Artist as a Young Hard-On. But empty porn it's not, as a movingly dirgelike cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" (the only song where Moffat actually sings) suggests. On "Hilary and Back," the grizzled narrator kisses a reckless underage girl at a house party. On "Double Justice," a character rhymes breathily, "Relax, it's only sex/Just me, two boys, a bed/My brand-new man and my jealous ex," turning the knife with the final words. Of course, it's never "only" sex — a fact Moffat knows too well and one that makes this odd little record resonate deeply.