Setting sail on a sea of broken glass with only a twisted whippet for a middle stump comes the first full-length release from ABSENTEE.
There is much wisdom in these numb & edgy tales. They tell of self destructive relationships that leave behind only torn photographs, all memories scrubbed clean by the forensic team, salvaged from the rubbish or the fire, or doomed to writhe undead in a blanked-out failure of blood and self hatred.
Volumes of harm-laden psychosis from five fathoms down are stirred up, as Daniel Michaelson’s vocals scrape together the debris left behind. Languid and infallibly deep, they stoop to the basest possible levels in order to trawl through the deeper, darker sides of life.
This is all set to a lazy, hazy country tempo, with a deep metronomic rhythm section, warm bass, and the drums half a skip behind the gobsmacked listener. Sick out that neck, find it left out on a limb before a guitar line of Babak’s own invention, surges out at you, stylistically designed to defy the acoustics (and belt you in the teeth). It’s a beautiful record, for all its deep and disgusting subject matter, but one that also hits you where it really hurts.
Distortion that pulls your feet from underneath you, like dark self hatred or a loathsome lack of self confidence will remind you of the people that want to curl up and die. Every base and vile act of evil is celebrated here. Dirty, drunken lust, with a stinking foul odour crawling through your thoughts, haunting you in your sleep, urging you to blacken out the mess in your waking hours as the cycle of destruction gathers momentum.
Beginning in an unassuming way, as perhaps most truly disastrous things do, this record is soon seething with self hatred, and ready to purge itself on its stinking drunken voyage of self rediscovery. ‘We should never have children’ hits you hard as the grotesque is caricatured against the lonesome aftermath, and bitter contempt.
‘There’s a body in a car somewhere’. Such a loose, languid delivery, the rhyming verses are to die for. We are confronted with domestic violence that ended in murder and not for the first time either. The guitars sound out the normality of this latest episodic killing; Melinda’s harmonies and gentle percussion intersperse with the high hat and cymbal tapping as this gently messed up record hits a long, long, instrumental period of self reflection before we are left to draw own conclusions.
”’Notheranimal”, slurs Michaelson as ‘Weasel’ kicks in and begins to scour depression’s rural outskirts for more sickening home truths, and the imminent paranoia finally begins to drip like dying glue out of the cracks in this fine, fine record. Did he mean “Worm in a dirty hole” to sound like “Women are dirty hoes”. Or was that my own misogynistic evil? If it was, where did it come from?
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Using the preconceived as a springboard for the absurder truths comes easy for this effortless band and a half, and here they tightrope walk the thin, thin line between tragedy and comedy with no safety net. This is exciting, and quite brilliant!
Gruesome findings are thrown up for our inspection as this scratched guitar touches genius and throws your mind out of its shell. Melinda’s harmonic “do-dododo-do-do do do” marks time as your eyes roll back, though the music just kicks in again and again as we are invited to take stock on what we have heard once more:
“Workin’ up a sweat, and scorin’ outta ten?” That’s me that is.
‘Something to bang’ hits you hard with a blaring brassy feel and punishing four beat. The bassline that thunders around your feet and under that deep, deep voice is mental: the guitar squeals out agony as the seething emotions hit boiling point and begin to leave scars. One hell of a tune, and it scorches itself deep into your skin and indelibly touches you.
Along the way, we bounce through the awesome and assholed ‘You Try Sober’, and the breezy and very beautiful ‘Getaway’. This is a take on country music that demands to be heard and mustn’t be missed. It left me exhausted and drained of all emotion, with the strength only to recommend it very, very highly indeed. Rollercoaster rides don’t come much wilder than this one. Get on this one for a long and heartfelt journey through life’s forgotten places.
Many things to many people, this release will hurt you because you love it so much. It is ineluctable.
Listen to this I swear!
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