Artist: Absentee
Title: Victory Shorts
Label: Memphis Industries
Genre: Indie
Bitrate: 180kbit av.
Time: 00:37:49
Size: 50.75 mb
Rip Date: 2008-07-12
Str Date: 2008-08-25
1. Shared 3:49
2. Boy, Did She Teach You Nothing? 2:43
3. The Nures Don't Notice A Thing 2:04
4. They Do It These Days 3:57
5. Love Has Had Its Way.. 4:18
6. Bitchstealer 3:58
7. We Smash Plates 4:29
8. Spitting Feathers 5:14
9. Pips 2:47
10. That Old Ghost 4:30
Release Notes:
The band have had two major releases so far. Donkey Stock in
2005 was a six track EP, which helped get the band noticed. In
2006, the band released a full length album called Schmotime,
which was well received by the music press, including a 7.1
Pitchfork rating. Much was made of the up-beat nature of the
songs, in stark contrast to the morbid nature of the lyrics -
'There's a body in a car somewhere' - for example. The album
was produced by James Ford, of Arctic Monkeys and Mystery Jets
fame. The band are currently touring around Europe. They
supported Bloc Party at a gig at the Olde Firestation in
Bournemouth on 24th January 2007.
Born to the sounds of Barry Manillow and The Carpenters,
raised on romantic comedies, and schooled in failed love and
misfiring lust? Absentee emerge well-versed in the rigours of
romance with their finest album to date, Victory Shorts.
Finding a seat somewhere between unreachable romanticism and
hopeless realism, Victory Shorts offers lush mini romantic
tragedies for those who thought Casablanca ended a little too
abruptly. Album opener 'Shared' sets the scene with a couple
pleased as punch that they found each other, until things take
a darker turn with Absentee smashing their way through 'Boy,
Did She Teach You Nothing?' latest EP title-track
'Bitchstealer' and 'Love Has Had Its Way' in an attempt to get
to the truth of the matter: Happy endings don't come easy.
'The Nurses Don't Notice a Thing' takes us on a walk with
someone looking for hope in a maternity wing: "our eyes
meeting as your waters break and I'm born again as him or
her," meditating on the beauty of innocence as: "the simplest
feelings of love explode into the room like cowboys in
saloons, I want to clap but it seems inappropriate." In 'We
Smash Plates' the lovers' first argument and consequent makeup
is summed up in a mess of broken crockery: "I ask you kindly
to take a seat whilst I'm sweeping broken china from around
your feet, like a miner bringing riches from the core... we
both smile knowing there will always be more".
By album closer 'That Old Ghost', we're left contemplating a
lovers' grip: "the way that you hold me, it won't be my heart
that breaks first" and the enduring qualities of love found
the hard way: "you don't have to ask me if you want me to
stay... I'm not a bird, I'm not a whore... you can just clap
your hands and make me run away".
Marked with the influence of Johnny Cash, Pavement and The
Velvet Underground, produced / engineered / mixed by Nick
Terry (Klaxons, Libertines, Bernard Butler), and shot through
with the originality and humour we've come to expect from
Absentee, Victory Shorts stands alone as the band's strongest,
most honest record yet.