Pitchfork

Van Halen have always rode pretty high on that flying horse of excess, Pegasus. Let's face it, Diamond Dave has probably had sex with both your parents, conceivably at the same time, and even conceivablier while flying in a plane made of cocaine and oatmeal. Which makes it so surprising when a duo of unassuming Scottish troubadours would dare handle the flaming lunacy of the Van Halen beast. But they do it, aided by the fact that, compared to Diamond Dave, Sammy Hagar is a cherub.

Sammy's songs actually contained references to *gasp* emotional attachment, though they were mercilessly buried under a thousand pounds of lusty laser-show guitar work. Arab Strap takes those fleeting moments of nakedness and gracefully coaxes them into a world without oppressive pyrotechnics. Emotive strings and a softly played acoustic guitar turn the song into a kind of pub symphony, with Aidan Moffett's crooning sounding equally sweet and lovelorn. Moffett actually manages to sing with dignity lines like: "No I can't recall, any love at all, baby this blows them all away." For me, anyone singing something Sammy Hagar wrote, and singing it convincingly enough to warrant the use of the word "dignity," deserves the highest accolades. Or at least a paragraph on a website somewhere.

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