Review Summary: Pretty much something you need to hear. Now.
The Antlers is comprised of Peter Silberman on vocals, Micheal Lerner on percussion, Darby Cicci on the keyboards, and features Justin Stivers on the bass guitar.
Picture a cold winter day in the crowded city of New York. People rush through the cluttered sidewalks trying to get to and from work through the lazily falling snowflakes. Up above, Peter Silberman gazes out of his slightly fogged window, watching the citizens scurry like ants. He slowly turns around and lurches across the cold tile floor to his bathroom, and proceeds to get ready for work. The only thoughts going through his mind are those of loneliness, melancholy, and the biting cold of the winter wind, penetrating the lone feelings of seclusion that he has left. These are the thoughts that are conjured whilst listening to Hospice, by The Antlers. The Antlers are an indie pop and ambient band that was formed by Peter Silberman in the year 2006. After retreating to New York to have some sort of creative revelation, In The Attic Of The Universe was released. He then recruited some band members and recorded two EPs, Cold War and New York Hospitals. From these two albums, Hospice was born.
The album is started off with an ambient track called
Prologue or, Hospice. While this track is entirely void of lyrics, it really sets the mood for the rest of the album. A sound reminiscent of church bells enters and a scene of a lone man standing in a graveyard next to an abbey can be felt. Although, again, this does not have any lyrics within the song, Silberman writes “Now, I won’t pretend I understand, because I can’t, and know I never will. But something makes her sting, and something makes her want to kill. It made her crawl under that house, and stick her head under the stove… well, my point in all of this is that it’s all connected in these complicated nightmares that we wove.” This essentially begins the tragic story of a man watching his wife die of bone marrow cancer. While he is helpless, she lies dying in her bed.
There is then a smooth transition into the keyboard-led track
Kettering or, Bedside Manner. Kettering starts off with a perfect balance of piano chords and a couple softly crooned verses about how the husband reacts to his wife being “abused by the bone that refused” her. It then wildly crescendos into a bass dominated ambiance section, in which there is the whirring of machines giving off the feel of a stark white hospital and the buzzing of the machines located inside. The diction used by Silberman portrays intense feelings of cold, stark, and melancholy.
Perhaps one of the songs that displays the love hate relationship of the couple would be
Sylvia or, Sliding Curtains Shining Children’s Heads. It, like Kettering, starts off with a quiet verse. The change this time would be when Silberman belts out the chorus, “Sylvia, get your head out of the oven. Go back to screaming and cursing, remind me again how everyone betrayed you. Sylvia, get your head out of the covers. Let me take your temperature, you can throw the thermometer right back at me, if that’s what you want to do, okay?” At the first listen, the abrupt change in volume was edging on obnoxious, although further listens show it to be one of the more emotionally charged areas on an already emotionally charged album. The helplessness created by the lyrics in this song is tangible enough to cut with a knife, which is truly a recurring theme.
The next ballad,
Atrophy or, Rings ill-fitting, exemplifies just how much the wife has atrophied. She has decided that her husband is letting her down and she must live vicariously through him. Although she is ordering him around he still feels responsible for her and therefore listens to what she says, albeit just wanting to take all of her pain away. In this tune lies the second most powerful lyrics, “Someone, oh anyone, Tell me how to stop this. She’s screaming, expiring, and I’m her only witness. I’m freezing, infected, and rigid in that room inside her. No one’s gonna come as long as I lay still in bed beside her.” Through the husband the true realization of sacrifice for another is made, as he regrets her degradation and does whatever he can to find solace while she held prisoner by her nightmares.
Next is the more pop oriented track
Bear or, children become their parents become their children. This song has the softer formula of the vocalist and the keyboards playing a larger role, but features the percussionist propelling the chorus with a well timed snare which eventually ends up with Silberman wailing in his falsetto, which sounds perfect instead of coming off as forced. While this doesn’t immediately settle into a sweet spot in perspective of the story, I found it to show a marital struggle in the beginning of the marriage before Sylvia was diagnosed with cancer. It depicts a young couple making decisions past their years having to decide whether to abort their child or not. While they eventually decide to perform the procedure, it ends up shaking their foundations as it makes them frightened of one another and slightly traumatizes the would be mother.
Thirteen or, Sylvia speaks is sort of the interlude of the album. A large portion is dedicated to a keyboard melody while the rest of the track is a solo by Sylvia who quietly expresses her failed expectations in her husband. Her solo winds up becoming a duet with her husband in which they both beg for help from the other.
The next track,
Two or, I would have saved her if I could, breaks out into a very pop oriented melody line with a quite beautiful combination of keyboard, strings, and a trumpet. Lerner also adds a very nice touch with his tasteful percussion which really helps the vocals to groove along with the rest of the song. While it is a very pop oriented track and would seem like it is the most positive song, lyrically it is quite dark. In the story, it is the point of no return. The doctor confesses to the husband that there is no way they can save Sylvia, causing the world to begin crashing around him. He describes her current state by saying that “Daddy was an asshole, he ***ed you up, built the gears in your head, now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. ‘Eighty-seven pounds!’ and this all bears repeating” showing just how much she has atrophied from being a normal human being.
Shiva or, portacaths switched shows our character envisioning himself in Sylvia’s shoes. The general feel of the song is quite barren, deriving a lot of it’s sound from an acoustic guitar, they keyboardist, and vocals. Silberman’s performance on this is quite remarkable, as he does some impressive vocal layering in his falsetto. As far as the story goes, it is very empathetic towards Sylvia. The line “hundreds of thousands of hospital beds, and all of them empty but mine” really shows how alone she is feeling, while the descriptions of the crater in her femur sound quite painful and help the listener to sympathize with all of the emotions the couple is feeling.
Wake or, letting people in achieves sort of a hymnal type feel with the tones sung in the background and the entire a capella portion of the track. It also seems to be one of the more airy and melancholy tracks on the album, which is quite impressive considering all of the other tracks that seem to have these themes in them. Eventually , Wake breaks into an explicably beautiful and somewhat dissonant ambient portion after which Silberman shows off his spectacular vocals and belts out, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you you deserve that.” It is in this song that Silberman is really in his element, showing off all of the wonderful things that he is able to do lyrically and vocally and in one final moment he is able to move the listener miles emotionally. The couple is at the point in the tale where they are sure she is about to die. Instead of having Sylvia die alone, he is encouraging her to accept others into her life once more. He feels like she is taking it to be her fault she is going to die. This all culminates into the line where he explains to her that she should never let anyone tell her she deserves death.
Finally, the album is sent off with the beautiful closer
Epilogue or, Sylvia alive in nightmares. Debatably this is the best song on the album. It is, simply enough, just vocals and an acoustic guitar for the most part. It, like so many other songs, starts off as very quiet but eventually builds into a louder part, which eventually gives way to a guitar line to finish off the album. What makes this track so special is essentially it’s simplicity. Possibly the best moment in music for 2009 is when Silberman crescendos into a falsetto vibrato, sending chills everywhere throughout the listener’s body and resulting in the biggest eargasm ever to exist. Emotion oozes from the song without sounding overly cheesy or juvenile. Lyrically this is also miles ahead of the other songs. While I cannot quote the entire song, my favorite line is “So I lie down against your back, until we’re both back in the hospital. But now it’s not a cancer ward, we’re sleeping in the morgue.” They are sung with such emotion and conviction that it is impossible not to love it. This concludes the story with Sylvia’s death. The husband is lying in bed at home dreaming about his deceased wife being “buried quite alive” and staying with him in his heart and mind although she has passed on from his world.
Loneliness and sadness are things we all feel. Whether it be a suicide or homicide or even the death of a pet from youth, they can all make us feel alone, depressed, or even drive us to suicide. Peter Silberman seems to have harnessed all of his feelings, wrote an epic story about the death of someone dearly close, and thrown it on a disc tears and all. It is for these reasons that we can expect to see great things come from The Antlers in the future, and this as my favorite album of 2009.
