MUSIC NEWS - Often, you have to put yourself first, no matter how tough that notion seems; no matter how much time and effort you’ve already put into someone, the person who’s reduced your very being to its absolute core. Just check with Peter Silberman, the string-pulling founder of The Antlers, a solo project that suddenly went wide with the self-released Hospice LP (now receiving a proper widespread pressing through Frenchkiss). The first Antlers release to feature two key permanent players; the owerhouse drummer Michael Lerner and multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci, it’s an album with a sound that’s actually as ambitious as its concept.
“Hospice came from the idea of caring for a terminal patient who’s mentally abusive to you,” said Silberman recently. “You don’t have the right to argue with them, either, because they’re the one who’s dying here; they’re the one that’s been dealt a wrong hand. So you take it, but you can only take so much. Eventually, you realize that this person is just destroying you.”
Hospice’s 10 distinct chapters resonate on debilitating sonic and lyrical levels, from the hypnotic harp and tension-ratcheting build of “Two” to the sing-or-sink choruses of “Bear” and the speaker-jarring peaks of “Sylvia,” certainly one of the year’s most immediate epics. Here, amidst contrasting shards of ambient noise, sweeping strings and smoky horns, is where The Antlers fully transcend Silberman’s singer-songwriter beginnings; a striking escalation of expectations first hinted at on 2008’s New York Hospitals EP. The progression doesn’t end there, either. In a move that could be taken as the riff-raking extension of his thorough guitar training (from the age of 6 ‘til right before college), “Atrophy” and “Wake” delve into sheets of distortion, subtle shades of soul, cicada-like effects and enough movements to fill an entire EP.
“We were going for something that’d be dense but not too complicated,” explains Silberman. “I hate the word ‘lush,’ but I guess that’s the best way of describing it. The structures are like pop songs—verse/chorus, verse/chorus—but the sound is a little more shoegaze-y or post-rocky.”
It’s about to get even more complicated, too, as The Antlers' Technicolor-tinged trio take all of Hospice’s songs—and three previous releases—in a completely different direction, jettisoning a note-for-note rendition of the record for “a massive sound” doused in delay, reverb and unrehearsed chaos. And to think Cicci was a stage actor with a desire to drop it all for music just a few years ago.
“Hospice was the clear indication that this isn’t a singer-songwriter thing at all,” says Silberman. “Whatever we record next is going to define the three of us as a ‘band.’ He furthers with; “I always figured I’d be the ‘shredder’ in a group… But things somehow ended up this way.”
And now, news of tour dates-
The Antlers Tour Dates
January 2010
30 - Music - Akron, OH
5 - Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera - Brooklyn, NY*
8 - The Warfield - San Francisco, CA#
9 - House of Blues - San Diego, CA#
11 - Wiltern Theatre - Los Angeles, CA#
13 - Ogden Theatre - Denver, CO#
15 - Vic Theatre - Chicago, IL#
16- Phoenix Concert Theatre - Toronto, ON#
18 - House of Blues Boston - Boston, MA#
19 - Terminal 5 - New York, NY#
20 - Trocadero - Philadelphia, PA#
21 - 9:30 CLub - Washington, DC#
* w/ Ra Ra Riot
# w/ Editors
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