Now, if you know me at all (and we've been sharing real and virtual space for years now, so its totally OK to assume you do), you know that I am not the kind of person to recommend listening to music about caring for terminally ill patients who are mentally abusive to you. I am the kind of person that recommends music equivalents of lollipops, walks in the park and melted soft serve ice cream cones dipped in chocolate. You know that.
But there is an exception to every rule and this is one of those. The Antlers put out Hospice (which for reasons of topic and description it took me FOREVER TO LISTEN TO IN THE FIST PLACE) and now as everyone is catching on to how great of a record it is (just getting some wider release on Frenchkiss) I have to say I cave and concur.
Lush and emotional without being melodramatic, filled with beautiful layers of way more instruments a 3 person band should play, with sweeping choruses, and yes, heartbreaking stories holding them all together.
It is a concept album, and a depressing concept album at that, but it really does work.
The Antlers are coming to DC 2 times in the next 3 weeks (first up this Saturday to RNR Hotel and then on June 18th to Iota with Cotton Jones) and we sat down with Peter Silberman to talk tracks and things so you go see them, as you rightfully should:
1. Prologue
This track, the introduction to the record, came about after spending a good amount of time with Sigur Ros' Svefn-g-englar. I love the way that album begins, and I think when I first started working on the track, I thought I'd end up making something that sounded like it. Ultimately, it got away from me and became much darker and different. One might assume the song's not about anything because it's lyric-less. But it's actually the walking in the doors.
2. Atrophy
This song started off pretty simply, as a bunch of drones layered on top of one another, not really going anywhere. A lot of songs on Hospice were born that way, but this was actually one of the more difficult ones to push in a certain direction. I was listening to a lot of Eluvium and Belong at the time, and I think that ended up shaping a lot of the blanket underneath the chords. Rhythmically, I think Michael & I both had Talk Talk in mind, specifically the song "New Grass" from Laughing Stock (or at least that's what I think when I hear it). Atrophy's about distance, the kind Raymond Carver writes about, in which people live together and stop talking to each other.
3. Shiva
I think this song's in the percussion. It brings out our old love of Massive Attack and dubbier electronic things. It's sort of a succinct pop song, probably the most straightforward on Hospice, but one of my favorites, maybe because it felt like it wasn't going to work for so long. I really like building up something dense and wide sounding and then dropping out everything but the drums and vocals. This song's about suddenly realizing you're the last person left in the building, everyone left awhile ago. You were distracted and didn't hear them when they were saying goodbye and didn't see them when they were waving their arms.
Want more:
http://www.myspace.com/theantlers
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check them out live on Saturday @ RNR Hotel (with also, BYT approved Au Revoir Simone and Jeffrey Lewis)
God loves a cheerful giver.
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