Album: Aidan John Moffat

I Can Hear Your Heart (Chemical Underground)

I Can Hear Your Heart takes a position diametrically opposed to Aidan Moffat's last album (as L Pierre), 2007's Dip. Where that featured instrumentals of a melancholy cast, this involves brutally frank recitations of the Arab Strap vocalist's carnally themed poems and prose pieces, delivered in his Glaswegian deadpan over backings so characterless they seem almost to absent themselves, as if embarrassed by the language: rarely more than an organ drone, a sampled snatch of quizzical soundtrack music, or the muffled beat from the party downstairs, as our protagonist fumbles his way to another anonymous conquest.

Moffat has said the subject is based on "a younger and idiotic me that has thankfully since grown up". You can see why he's grateful, judging by the grim fallout of the loveless promiscuity anatomised in pieces like "I'm Not Bitter", "You Took It Well" and "Nothing In Common". In the latter, the affair is pursued despite his acknowledgement, from the start, of their incompatibility: "So we're talking about music, but everything you play is shite..." Heart may overrule head, but another organ trumps both every time.

Download this: 'International Valentine', 'You Took It Well', 'Nothing In Common'