Dan Michaelson is such a slight looking fellow that it comes as something of a shock to hear him sing. The frontman and lyricist of the East London quintet Absentee has such a deep voice that he makes Nick Cave sound like, er, Kylie Minogue. “It came as a surprise to me. And my parents,” says the 29-year-old, though he is merely a chip off the old block. “My Dad has a really low voice, ” he adds.
There is more to this band than a skinny man with a deep timbre, though. Absentee play songs with titles such as My Dead Wife, We Should Never Have Children, and Truth is Stranger Than Fishin’. The Magic Numbers are rarely snapped without their Absentee badges on — their own leader, Romeo Stoddart, played bass for them until his other commitments became too onerous.
Last year’s mini-album Donkey Stock was even spotted by the NME, whose writers placed it in their Top 30 of 2005, quite a compliment for a downbeat collection of literate tunes from a band whose original intention was “to fill the gap between Brian Eno and Barry Manilow”.
This could even be their year, if they can just work out what they should be doing. “What are we trying to promote? Let’s talk about that,” suggests the keyboardist and backing vocalist Melinda Bronstein, matter of factly.
Here goes then. The band (“none of us is under 25”) are about to go out on their first headline tour after jaunts with the Numbers and their labelmates the Go! Team.
“It will be interesting to see what kind of people turn up. Who likes Absentee? Do people that I like like us?” ponders Michaelson.
They also have a new single to plug. Something to Bang is a ferocious taster from their forthcoming album, the sublimely titled Schmotime. A rueful comment on masculine drives (“I’m tired of being a man, always something to bang”), it sounds a lot like the Velvet Underground’s I Can’t Stand It (“only with better lyrics”, according to Dan).
The flipside, You Try Sober, is just as good, a duet featuring Michaelson and Bronstein as a pair of sots wondering if drink is all that keeps them together. Comparisons have already been made with Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, and, though Michaelson isn’t too sure what the 1960s duo sounded like, he is pleased with the result. “We hadn’t done a dual perspective song before. This one is very much a conversation,” he says.
Appropriately, Absentee already have a bit of a reputation for liking a drink — and boozing journalists into submission.
“We’re lucky in that we drink so much we forget all the bad s*** that happens,” claims Michaelson. “We’re good enough at it that nothing ever really gets out of hand.”
“That’s going to look good in print,” the bearded guitarist, Babak Ganjai, observes drily. Ganjai is also responsible for the band’s distinctive artwork. His drawing for the sleeve of the new record (basically, Michaelson under the bed of a sleeping girl) has directly inspired Absentee’s first video — a stalking scenario set in one room.
The lyrics to their songs inspire such snapshot tales. “Some of the lyrics are good. They don’t tell long-winded stories about an ongoing disaster,” says Michaelson. “They’re about specific moments in time, be it a sudden realisation or an hour’s conversation. They’re compact in terms of storytelling.”
“You could make little films out of them,” swears Bronstein.
“The next album will span 25 years of British history,” lies Ganjai, looking ahead.
It’s unlikely. “Politics is one of many subjects I have no understanding of. I’d love to, but I get the feeling it’s a lot of work, and I don’t have the time. Maybe later,” says Michaelson.
Unusually, Ganjai has seen his own band play without him. “I saw you two playing a few months ago and I had to pay to get in. I was slightly disappointed,” he reveals.
“We were like Raw Sex — remember them? A lot of Casio keyboards,” says Michaelson, reminiscing about French and Saunders’s old backing duo.
“I was the guy with the glasses and you were Roland Rivron,” says Bronstein.
The pair have worked together since college days, but Absentee the band, including the bassist Laurie Earle and John Chandler on drums, were formed long after Michaelson’s first record under the name.
Finally the public are starting to understand their intentions. Jonathan Ross (with his Radio 2 hat on) loves them. Their Myspace friends now include someone purporting to be the late Serge Gainsbourg, something of a hero. “I read that the only time anyone saw him cry was when he saw a Gauloises advert with 20 or 30 kids impersonating him,” says an admiring Michaelson.
Another deep voiced role model is American singer and poet David Berman. Sadly for Absentee he beat them to the title ‘How Can I Love You When You Won’t Lie Down?’.
“We’d have got there eventually,” says Ganjai.
“We just needed more time. He’s five albums in and came up with a lyric like that,” marvels Michaelson, Berman once enlisted the great, inexplicably forgotten Pavement as his backing musicians, and Absentee evoke their entrancing, often wobbly melodies like no one since. At last then, we have a band who admit to learning at a university other than ‘life’.
- Something to Bang is out on March 6 (M.I.). Absentee are on tour from March 1. www.absenteemusic.co.uk
