Absentee "You Try Sober"

Thursday, May 18, 2006

If Silver Jews’ “Punks in the Beerlight” was high-drama bar anthropology of dizzy, messy massive pub romance (which it totally was), then Absentee’s “You Try Sober” (mp3) is a weekday argument between Berman’s lovers in an apartment living room. The drunken opera has long-ceased and revealed itself as an anomaly, the altar was stolen on the last night of summer, and the harsh light of the everyday has replaced the glow of the Coors sign. The girl has since walked out on the guy, but realized she acted in error. Door creaks open, guy sits up on couch. He goes first, then the girl (who actually sounds like a lazy high-pitched male voice) apologizes. He’s sarcastically dismissive of what sounds like an earnest (if somewhat pathetic) plea: she: “I wanna hold ya, I wanna make things right.” he: “Why don’t you try sober, if you’re so sure?” She wants him back, she’s sorry, but he’s not too keen on listening to excuses coated in alcohol, and can barely look up from his crossword puzzle long enough to repeat that phrase again and again, like a press secretary, or a Cassavetes character on Prozac. Which is a bit ironic, because he’s the one who sounds drunk. He might be angry, but we don’t know that from his vocal timbre, so low it sounds like slo-motion. And we go back and forth, back and forth, never getting anywhere but enjoying the awkward theatre. Let’s not kid ourselves, we learn. It gets really really bad.

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