Review Summary: When love is a safer place we both remember.
"And now's he howling, but I'm muted by the horror.
How he's everywhere and waiting,
now he's just around the corner."
It seems to be an oft overlooked fact that Familiars, often cited as one of the gorgeous and tender albums of the year, sometimes viewed as void of the tension that creeped out of The Antlers previous releases, spends over half of its duration absolutely succumbed within Silberman's restless inadequacy and self-loathing. Granted, this is familiar territory for Antlers fans. The Antlers, if nothing else, are masters of the craft of fully submerging their listeners into a sea of emotions, and because of this, Hospice is a masochistic wonderland, and Burst Apart it's muted, quivering aftermath. Familiars doesn't quite have the cancer thing going for it, but with its antagonist a "doppelganger" of Pete Silberman, likely containing all of his brutish and destructive tendencies, ever-crawling on the wall behind him, Familiars certainly contains more nightmare fuel, and just as much poetic despair.
Yet there's a change. Opening track "Palace" doesn't just serve as an instrumental foreshadowing of the rest of the album's dynamic, but also a thematic foreshadowing. In it Silberman finds his soul-mate, and unlike his previous two albums where they're either hurdling towards a painful empty death or a painful empty separation, things are going to work out perfectly this time, Silberman is going to be safe. It's hope, and more than that, it's assured hope. As the album saunters through all of Silberman's depravities, the listener knows there is an escape, and they're hurdling towards it (or more apt: floating), slowly but surely.
"So you forgot your way?
Well I’m trying to remind you."
"Parade" in that sense is a climax of sorts, not just of Familiars, but also perhaps The Antler's entire discography. "Before our suffering’s suffering, hadn’t we suffered enough?" Silberman cries, and goddamn it we have. From that point on the horns blow triumphantly, for the first time, and the album finds a new trajectory. Something similar to heaven, or paradise, or if I can be an emotional sap, I'll just call it love.
I have a tendency towards hyperbole, I'll freely admit that, but Familiars is perhaps the most beautiful, complex, and utterly affecting representation of love I've ever heard on an indie rock album, or any rock album for that matter. The definition of that love "Palace" lays out immediately is succinct and entirely perfect, "the day we wake inside a secret place that everyone can see", but I think I even more prefer the image the record closes on in it's closing track. "It's not our house that we remember, it’s a feeling outside it when everyone's gone but we leave all the lights on anyway." I believe the images are complex enough where everybody is going to come away with a different emotional take-away, but to me, it's that feeling of confident surrender to someone else, where you can be entirely vulnerable and entirely safe in your escape. More than that, it's a return to innocence, an escape from the regrettable individual you've turned into, and the overbearing world that surrounds you, and damn, don't we ache for all of that?
Some may deride my classic rating by citing the record's monotony and lack of compositional variety compared to previous Antlers records, and they're not wrong about the fact, but they are wrong about its implications. "Familiars" needs that monotony, it thrives on it. It begs you to get lost in it, pleads you to sink into it, and gives little care if you check out and completely miss a track or two. It's more concerned about the journey and the destination and not about the specifics. It's a haughty and demanding goal, to be sure, but when the listener is in the place to let the album carry them, I believe it's executed perfectly.
Love is certainly the most written about of subjects, and being an unfortunate romantic at heart who has never once gotten over an ex, I'm often a sucker for albums that explore its tender underbelly. I even appreciate Coldplay's Ghost Stories, even if Chris Martin's touching and sincere sentiments only resulted in overwrought cliches and tacky songwriting. And yes, I react like a ***ing teenage girl to Death Cab For Cuties "Transatlanticism", but those albums only remind me of what I've lost. Familiars reminds me of what I had. Depending on where you're at, that's either brutal or rejuvenating. Either way, it's breathtaking.
