Jun 24 2006
Absentee
While browsing around looking at some of the bands that will be playing at Electric Gardens in august, I happened upon the page of Absentee. This is a band that describes their sound as “Leonard Cohen singing from the trouser backed up with a mix of incompetence and occasional surprise”. Go on, tell me you wouldn’t be the least bit curious after reading a description like that.
So I started to listen to ‘Something To Bang’. It all started normally enough, all garage band guitars and bassline, and then, forty five seconds in, the vocal kicks in. That’s the point where I discovered they really weren’t kidding with the Leonard Cohen thing. Lead singer Dan does have a voice that evokes Cohen, and more importantly, a voice that isn’t usually found in indie rock. Indie rock is often made up of those who can’t really sing but really want to rock out, and the music will disguise that well. The people with the stronger voices seem to go on and do other things. This isn’t exactly a perfect rule, but it fits quite a lot of the time. I guess my point here is that there’s a voice here that you don’t commonly hear. The closest contemporary comparison I can think of is David Berman, and that’s certainly not a bad thing.
As the song progresses, more musical flourishes enter. There are keyboards in here, sneaky little riffs and a bunch of other fun stuff. All of this results in an indie-country-rock type sound that you don’t often hear coming from bands on this side of the Atlantic.
MP3 Absentee - Something To Bang (expired)
‘Something To Bang’ is taken from ‘Schmotime’, which was released last month on Memphis Industries.
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