The Antlers - Hospice

Well I guess its time to break in my blog. The inaugural post is about an album by the Brooklyn trio The Antlers. The Antlers started as a solo project by Peter Silberman, who was soon joined by a percussionist and keyboardist.
The concept album, Hospice, is a haunting work that chronicles Silberman's relationship with a terminally ill cancer patient in a New York City hospital. I believe he was a nurse at this hospital, and became emotionally involved with a patient in hospice. Most the songs are about his experiences dealing with losing his lover to cancer. The album was written during a two year self-imposed exile, where Silberman chose to not leave is apartment or see anyone. His total social isolation is truly palpable in the songs. The album was self-released earlier this year, and due to widespread critical, and some commercial success, the album was re-mastered and released on Frenchkiss Records.



It. Is. Awesome.
The lyrics are tender and intimate, like a confession in the dark. The album's first lyrics, softly whispered: "I wish that I had known in that first minute we met the unpayable debt that I owed you." ...And the gut wrenching honesty persists to the end on the LP. Throughout the record, warm ambient swells combine with shivering strings and filtered percussion to create fuzzy indie-rock with post-rock, ambient and even folksy tendencies. There are moments on this album where I am so overtaken with emotion it brings me close to tears. Near the beginning of Sylvia (about Sylvia Plath), Silberman yells, "Sylvia, get your head out of the oven. Go back to screaming and cursing, remind me again how everyone betrayed you." which is followed later by triumphant and mournful horns. There are just so many of these heart breakingly beautiful moments. At the end of Atrophy we hear of Silberman's intense desperation. There is even some sexuality in this gloomy situation.
"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."

Ive only really talked about the first three songs here, but there is more to hear for sure. This is really an album in the sense that it is best to listen to it all the way through. The songs reference each other, and flow together seamlessly. Never have I heard such a drifting heaviness as I have in Hospice. In a year with so much great music, this will stand above, and certainly make it to my top 3 albums of '09.

FFO: the punch in the gut emotion of Elliott Smith with Win Butler's trembling vocal crescendos.

Below is the music video for Two, a live performance at NPR, the album and official liner notes.




The Antlers - Hospice

Liner Notes

Website

Official MySpace