The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Absentee are such a prolific band and they play so often that when they do decide to slip off the radar for a bit, it seems like they been away for an age. Before their triumphant return gig on June 10, they hadn’t performed for, ooooh, all of six months, but their comeback almost felt like a Led Zeppelin-style reunion show. True to their nature, however, they hadn’t been doing much sitting on their arses while they were actual absentees. The gig was a tie-in with the release of a new EP, ‘Bitchstealer’; there’s a full-length ready to roll out in September; frontman Dan finished off his solo album; guitarist Babak did a record with his other band, Wet Paint, which bass player Laurie is in too; and everyone’s lost count of how many side-projects keyboardist/percussionist Melinda is involved in. Three? Three thousand?

“I couldn’t see a reason why people would want to hear the songs over and over again,” says Dan, the day after the show. “We’d been gigging a lot and when you do that, you just start repeating yourself - you can end up doing things by numbers. That’s bad.”

Absentee write excellent songs - clever songs, witty songs, romantic songs, often bleak songs, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny ones. They spring from Dan initially, then the band work on them together. “I still can’t write middle-eights,” says Dan with resign, “but Babak can, and what he comes up with can sometimes totally change the idea I had in the beginning. The same thing happens with Melinda: she plays so many different instruments that you often want to re-arrange the song so that you can hear what she’s doing. Laurie is probably the most musical person among us, so he’s crucial to everything, and we have a new drummer now [Che Albrighton].”

“That’s definitely brought something fresh to the band,” adds Melinda. “He’s different to Jon. When he’s playing quietly, he’s really quite, and when he’s loud, he’s really LOUD.”

Ah, loudness. Absentee may be known as a lightly indie, country-fried pop band, but they’ve amped things up with their new album, Victory Shorts. “Lyrically, it’s getting to grips with another stage of life,” explains Dan. “Everyone in the band has a completely different life to the one they had two years ago, and the record definitely reflects that change. We went for a much more progressive sound too, and we made decisions before we recorded. Donkey Stock [debut mini album] was kind of country, Schmotime [first album proper] was almost a lush pop record, and we’ve changed again - really successfully, I think. Previously, everything was covered in a Mazzy Star-like reverb. It makes it nice to listen to, but this one hits you between the eyes a bit more.”

Victory Shorts, which is cleaner and fuller, may even sound like a more commercial Absentee record.

“Really!?” says Melinda, utterly floored by the suggestion.

“Oh god, I don’t know about that,” says Dan. “By the end of the last record, I’d really lost sight of all those things. We were getting great reviews in the NME, but we weren’t getting noticed elsewhere. I think we’re like a slow build, but I don’t know quite how slow… it could be really slow. We’re certainly not prepared to make anything happen other than in the way it should happen - i.e. people like our band.”

Absentee are getting bolder and better and, as previous touring partners with their friends Bloc Party and The Magic Numbers, they certainly know how to handle the bigger stage. Best of luck to them with Victory Shorts, then. You’ll have to wait till autumn for that, so for now gorge on their ‘Bitchstealer’ EP.

“Is ‘bitchstealer’ a real word now?” asks Babak, genuinely curious.

“Hmmm, it’s in the Urban Dictionary,” deadpans Dan. “That’s good enough for me.”