You see them better at night, of course.

Sometimes they’re lasers; sometimes they’re flares; sometimes they’re saucers—bright orbs in the sky.

Karlheinz Stockhausen wanted to see them. The moustachioed council guy started to see them. I think Arab Strap saw them once. So did my mum.

They say these unsolved Central Scotland “sightings”—which earned the area the tag of the Bonnybridge Triangle—are a product of the chemical plant nearby. But if such incandescent phenomena are fashioned by a petroleum glow, how might we explain the impact they’ve exercised toward extraordinary Triangle natives, Arab Strap?

Their bewitching, extra-terrestrial treatise “The Clearing” audibly re-writes a small-town Body Snatchers episode wherein singer Aidan Moffat’s conformist human amorata is replaced with a wanton alien doppelganger who surfaces spread-legged and leering in a crop circle.

Our protagonist’s paranormal incredulity is palpable, as is his awareness of further Martian attendance: “And now the things that used to turn me off / I find endearing / And they laugh behind the trees / As she lies naked in the clearing,” he groans.

Some say the Bonnybridge Triangle’s prolific UFO accounts—which number more than Area 51 or Roswell—can be explained by the arching flight paths of planes as they scale the blackening Scottish skies. But flights to Lanzarote alone cannot elucidate the celestial being of inhabitants the Cocteau Twins: their soaring alien aria “Little Spacey” evinces a lunar, otherworldly charm. Indeed, the Cocteaus’ signature shimmering distortion and interstellar serenades make like a channel to another dimension.

Some people advocate that the locale’s impressive intake of fortified tonic wine is commensurate with the UFO sightings (re-christening it, wryly, the ‘Buckfast Triangle’). But if the populace is pie-eyed and addled on liquor, how can its resident jazz agitator, Bill Wells, create such vibrant, life-affirming art—such as the glorious “Wiltz,” which comes on like Close Encounters meets Belle & Sebastian? This smacks of cosmic—not alcoholic—forces.

Final proof of Central Scotland as Astral Portal is evidenced by sonic astronauts Mogwai: they hail from beyond the Bonnybridge Triangle, and appear to regret that this is so, on their silvery satellite discourse, “Take Me Somewhere Nice.” It beautifully berates a painful lack of alien action on their city-centre patch: “What would you do / If you saw spaceships / Over Glasgow?” sighs Stuart Braithwaite, bereft of said experience, ever.

You see them better at night, of course—but not in the city, if we’re to listen to Mogwai. I guess they’re trepidatious, or maybe just shy, these curious stars in the Scottish sky.

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