THESE are the darkest days of the year; a time to retreat inside and share stories. They’re more likely to come from box sets and Netflix than the local storyteller these days, but the need to make sense of the world with tales pre-dates history. And at this time of year, our anxieties are often expressed in a taste for the supernatural, as if we have to exorcise them before making merry at Christmas; less courie in, more freaking out.

When, in 2005, the BBC rebooted their Ghost Stories For Christmas – chilling 1970s adaptations of the likes of The Signalman by Charles Dickens and A Warning To The Curious by the masterly MR James – they were referencing that much older, oral tradition of midwinter eeriness. So too are Aidan Moffat and RM Hubbert with their new album Ghost Stories For Christmas.

Its tales tell of ghosts of love, grizzled men haunted by their younger selves, magical mirrors, pagan rites and, on its twinkling title track, a woman who floats around the fairy lights as a family wait for Christmas. Maybe she’s exhausted, maybe she’s not there at all.

Despite the gruff sing-a-longs, sleigh bells and mistletoe, loneliness shivers off the record like frost from a car bonnet, only to grab you by the heart on covers of Yazoo’s Only You – a Christmas number one for the Flying Pickets back in 1983 – and a desolate take on Mud’s 1974 hit, Lonely This Christmas.

It shares a theme with Here Lies The Body, the songwriter and guitarist’s bleak and beautiful collaborative album debut, released in May this year. Also featuring the vocals and cello of Edinburgh musician Siobhan Wilson, the album was written and recorded over a few years by Moffat and Hubbert – friends back since the early days of Moffat’s band Arab Strap.

Accompanied by Hubbert’s delicate flamenco-picking, Moffat’s carnally-concerned lyrics were influenced by an article he’d written about women who leave their families when a relationship ends.

“We had a long-running joke about that record that I would send him 10 songs about death and he’d send me back ten songs about shagging,” laughs Hubbert – first name Robert, known as Hubby.

A Ghost Story For Christmas, originally intended as a one-off festive single, was written shortly after the pair had completed Here Lies The Body.

“In my mind it was about the same people,” says Moffat. “I wrote it as an epilogue or something to Here Lies` The Body. Hubby thought it was a lot darker when he first heard it. He was totally convinced it was about a death in the family. It could be. There are two or three ghosts in that story, I’m not sure who is and who isn’t.”

When the decision came to make a full-length record, the loneliness of A Ghost Story For Christmas “informed the whole thing, even the choice of covers”, says Moffat. Only You was already a part of the pair’s sets on live outings dating back to around the time of Car Song, a 2012 single they recorded with Franz Ferdinand henchman Alex Kapranos. Almost ditched for East 17’s Stay, they instead decided to strip the schmaltz from Mud’s glam heartbreaker.

“The way Mud did it was a really obvious, crass Elvis pastiche, which totally takes away from the fact that it’s quite a brutal song, and really beautiful,” says Hubby. “It sounds really natural for it to come out of Aidan’s mouth. Tonally it’s exactly right.”

Near the album’s end, placed between a wry adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fir Tree and a charming take on a Christmas essay by Dickens, is Ode To Plastic Mistletoe, a track with origins in 2003 – the year The Office Christmas specials were first broadcast.

“When I met my girlfriend, the first Christmas we were together we had to spend apart,” says Moffat. “She was down with her family, and I was up here with my mum in Falkirk. My friend John drove me back to Glasgow where I was just sitting alone in Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, and it was just full of lonely people. I remember going home and watching The Office and howling in tears, on my own. That’s all in the album too.”

Sixteen years later, they are still boyfriend and girlfriend, with a 10-year-old son and a daughter who is five. Both make appearances on the record, his son leading the band in album closer The Recurrence Of Dickens, and his daughter likely influencing the lyrics of Such Shall You Be, where an old man looks back from the bathroom mirror.

“I find myself doing a lot of that at Christmas, hiding in the toilet, with a book maybe,” says Moffat. “Everybody needs an escape from their family at Christmas, everyone needs a bit of peace, a bit of respite.”

Moffat is about to enjoy some respite when he speaks with the Sunday National; a short tour of England with Hubby before the pair play a February 3 concert as part of Celtic Connections.

“Everyone I know with children who works in music just can’t wait to get away on tour,” Moffat says. “It used to be quite a chore but these days I’m like: ‘Great, I can just sit on a bus all day, look out the window and do nothing’.”

It’s changed days since the drugs and dancing of The Weekend Never Starts Around Here, Moffat’s debut with Malcolm Middleton as Arab Strap back in 1996. Reformed two years ago, Arab Strap’s early years were comparatively relaxed.

“I remember Arab Strap took a year off just because we fancied it,” Moffat says. “We could do that as the industry was really healthy. These days you just have to keep working, keep things going. I work 10 times harder than I did then, for a fraction of the money. I like it though, I love my job. I’m just happy to keep going.”

Both now in their mid-40s, what sustains them through the hard work is the confidence and prioritising that comes with experience.

For all its darkness, Ghost Stories For Christmas, recorded with Paul Savage at Chem19 over the dog days of summer, was a ball to make.

“We’re both of an age, and of a place career-wise, that we’re concerned that we’re not having a sh*te time,” says Hubby. “We want it to be fun, and that’s how the Christmas album came about, just being in the studio and enjoying it. We kept going because we were having so much fun.”

THE guitarist enjoyed it so much he taught himself piano at Moffat’s request, learning from YouTube videos in much the same way he developed his unique, often sublime guitar playing.

A prolific collaborator, Hubby says working with Moffat felt natural.

“Aidan is one of the easiest people I’ve ever collaborated with,” says Hubby, noting that the pair haven’t just written, recorded and released two albums together this year: a live album recorded on tour with violinist and vocalist Jenny Reeve is scheduled to follow for Record Store Day in April.

“Collaborating is about trusting the other person to take it seriously, and I absolutely trust Aidan to do that,” he continues.’ ‘‘He’ll say if something isn’t going to work for him. I tend not to edit stuff from collaborators. I think that kind of defeats the purpose if you ask someone to do something and then you try to shape what they do, and I just trust him to not be sh*te, basically.”

He adds: “This record was the opposite of Here Lies The Body. There’s this weird dichotomy in that at the centre of this collaboration is probably the best fun. We got on really well. I don’t think we had any fights.

"I realise though, that I’m reminding myself of the things I told myself before I got divorced, that: ‘Oh yeah, everything’s fine. Oh no, we’ve split up’."

Moffat agrees with a laugh: “It may not sound like an obvious party album, I’ll say that, but that’s what we were having.”

Aidan Moffat and RM Hubbert play Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket on February 3 in a Celtic Connections concert, with support from Marry Waterson and Emily Barker, 8pm, £16. Tickets from bit.ly/AidanHubbyFeb3

Ghost Stories For Christmas is out now on Rock Action rockaction.co.uk

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CHRISTMAS FAVOURITES

AIDAN MOFFAT

Batman #219: The Silent Night Of The Batman (1969)

A short comic story published from 1969, in which Batman has nothing to do because Gotham’s full of Christmas spirit. Thieves return stolen goods and gangsters throw away their guns as Batman sings carols for six hours straight at the local precinct with Commissioner Gordon.

Scrooged (1988)

Bill Murray’s take on A Christmas Carol remains one of the finest adaptations of the Dickens story, and he’s perfect as the miser who learns kindness – and one of the ghosts is actually quite scary. I love the original Dickens book too, and also The Muppet Christmas Carol is brilliant – Michael Caine as Scrooge!

Mystery In White: A Christmas Crime Story (1937)

Written by J Jefferson Farjeon, this is a whodunnit set in a big house full of strangers after they all seek shelter from the snow. I love old murder mysteries with houses full of sinister strangers – sounds like Christmas to me!

The Office Christmas Special – Parts 1 & 2 (2003)

The original Office is still amazing, and might even be more relevant now as climates change in workspaces. And that final scene, when Dawn walks back into the Christmas party as Yazoo’s Only You plays, it’s one of the most beautiful TV moments ever made, and it still makes me cry.

Die Hard (1988)

An obvious choice, perhaps, but I’ll never tire of it. I dogged off school to go and see this – I was underage at the time but they let me in anyway. I entered as a boy, and I emerged as a man.

RM HUBBERT

A Carol For Another Christmas (1964)

An update of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by Rod Serling. Set after the Second World War, it’s a pretty grim retelling with visits to Hiroshima, internment camps and a future nuclear holocaust. It does have Peter Sellers in  a crown-shaped cowboy hat though.

Dead Of Night (1945)

A genuinely spooky film  from the 1940s about a Christmas party in a haunted house. You’ll recognise that ventriloquist dummy from your nightmares.

The Devil Of Christmas (2016)

Inside No 9’s Christmas special is not technically a ghost story but it is very disturbing. And clever. Don’t watch it with your grandparents.

Gremlins (1984)

Again, not a ghost story, but come on, GREMLINS. It’s gorier and more disturbing than I remember it as a child. Explains a lot.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

I’m going to add this as it’s always on at Christmas. Plus, there’s a lot of snow in it. And the ghost of Alec Guinness. Not to mention the ghosts of my childhood hopes and dreams. Merry Christmas!