Arab Strap's first two albums, "The Week Never Starts Around Here" (1996) and "Philophobia" (1998), depicted the desperate decadence of post-Thatcherite Britain. The former album's "The First Big Weekend", a five-minute piece of drunken mayhem that end with a joyous singalong, "Went out for a weekend, lasted forever / Got high with our friends, it's officially summer," which was later also used as the chorus to "Hey!Fever," one of the tracks on the EP "The Girls of Summer" the following year. The 1999 live album, "Mad for Sadness", demonstrated how the sometimes spare recorded sound of their early music could lift into a celebration of a sexually empty, drug- and alcohol-dependent life. After these albums, Arab Strap's music became much more musically polished, but continued to focus on drink, drugs, and existentially bereft versions of sexuality.