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May 12, 2011
By Ian Cohen
Brooklyn's indie scene can feel like a series of bands each trying to be hipper than the next, but
thankfully nobody told Pete Silberman. In the dog days of 2009's deadbeat summer, the Antlers
frontman emerged from his bedroom with his third LP, Hospice. On it, he unfashionably embraced
hackles-raising choruses and concept-album ambition, and he pushed the button on emotional nuclear
options: abortion, cancer, death, all that fun stuff. Now a trio, the Antlers have claimed the influence of
"electronic music" for Burst Apart, a typical omen for a typically "difficult follow-up album." But while
Burst Apart sheds the PR-bait bio and Arcade Fire aspirations that made its predecessor a word-ofmouth success, it's still tethered to a magnanimity and expressive clarity that makes it almost every bit
as devastating.
Lead single "Parentheses" didn't do much to show their hand; it's pretty misleading out of context.
Sounding like a higher-BPM "Climbing Up the Walls", the knockabout electronic percussion and
tweaked piano ripples rightfully marked some connection to the post-OK Computer, pre-Kid A
application of Mo' Wax and Warp textures to alt-rock song structures. But the aggression in
Silberman's falsetto and the gnarly guitar distortion are revealed as total outliers, and Burst Apart can
actually be seen as Hospice turned inside out: Where before, long swathes of calm white noise linked
emotive outcries, Burst Apart moves patiently through luxurious downtempo tones belying some
serious romantic disturbance.
Those well-versed in dream journal interpretation could gather that from the mere title of "Every Night
My Teeth Are Falling Out" (a common symbolic manifestation of sexual frustration). After all, Burst
Apart does open with "I Don't Want Love", a heartbreaking wallow in a numbing hangover from a
singer who previously seemed doomed to feel too much. Its glistening melody at least helps it scan as
pop, but "Parentheses" and "Every Night" feel cut from the same cloth as the Walkmen's "The Rat",
holding onto sanity with white knuckles, sexual congress seen as mutually assured destruction.
Aside from those, Burst Apart's atmosphere is nocturnal and desolate. Foreboding death-crawl "No
Widows" fears for vehicular disaster; brief flickers of light are allowed full exposure on the gorgeous,
incantatory centerpiece "Rolled Together", whose brushed drum work and silvery guitars could be
heard as a studiously completed homework assignment on Agaetis Byrjun. Meanwhile, the tender,
nearly beatless balladry of "Hounds" and "Corsicana" are wholly the Antlers' own and painfully pretty
to behold-- however depressive Silberman's lyrics, one can simply revel in the zero-gravity synth and
vocal moans and feel some sort of uplift.
Shame that it makes Burst Apart's missteps all too egregious. This isn't the sort of record that calls for
a show-stopping power ballad, but we get one anyway with "Putting the Dog to Sleep", where
needlessly histrionic vocals and an overwrought doo-wop progression come off more like last call
karaoke than a fitting closer. If nothing else, "Putting the Dog to Sleep" helps point toward the Antlers
successfully making Burst Apart more about their growth as a band than a gripping backstory-- for all
of Hospice's raw power, it didn't leave much to the imagination, and it either hit you right in the gut or
not at all. The Antlers won't hold your hand through Burst Apart, which will inevitably make it more of a
grower, but stick around-- it's all the more affecting for how it allows you to pick your own stumbling,
lonely path.
THE ANTLERS
Album review: “Burst Apart”
May 13, 2011
By Catherine P. Lewis
New York indie-rock trio the Antlers certainly set a high bar with its much-buzzed-about 2009
release, “Hospice,” about the relationship between a hospice worker and a patient. While that
album was rife with gut-wrenching lyrics and instrumentation, the group has taken a different
tack with its latest, “Burst Apart.”
It certainly wouldn’t have taken much for the new album to be a cheerier listen than “Hospice.”
But more than that, the Antlers have taken a page from My Bloody Valentine’s book, turning
Peter Silberman’s chilling falsetto into an instrument and letting his lyrics fade into the
background. The song “No Widows” creates a trancelike atmosphere as Silberman’s vocals
float with a ghostlike tone, while his repetitious and nearly incomprehensible murmur builds in
intensity on “Rolled Together.”
There are plenty of songs on “Burst Apart” with distinguishable lyrics, many that are as emo
as ever (“Prove to me I’m not going to die alone,” Silberman croons on “Putting the Dog to
Sleep”). Still, after the powerful “Hospice,” it’s the less-straightforward tracks that are the most
intriguing here, as Silberman shows that his voice is as versatile as any instrument in the
band.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK: THE ANTLERS, BURST
APART
May 10, 2011
By David Berry
Hospice, The Antlers’ utterly flooring debut, was like an emotional mind-meld with a seismograph
needle during an earthquake. Built off the terrifying immediacy of frontman Peter Silberman’s voice,
which can capture everything from a whispered mumble to the seconds before a supernova, it was a
raw-nerve account of a doomed love story, the ecstatic joy of having an everything versus the crushing
defeat of watching that person slowly succumb to cancer.
Though it doesn’t have the narrative cohesion, their follow-up, Burst Apart, treads in roughly the same
waters: loosely speaking, the downside of love, the inevitably of such succinctly disparaged in the title
of the opening track, I Don’t Want Love. Here, though, there is no such finality as death; here things
are ending because of our living frailty, a fact that seems as inescapable as us getting over them and
trying again. None of this is quite as cathartic as a death-bed lullaby, of course, but the reduced
emotional palette doesn’t necessarily take away from the quality of Silberman’s insight.
Practically speaking, the sound also departs from Hospice‘s extremes to land somewhere less
gripping but more moody. Washed-out electronics take prominence, settling like a fog over much the
album, with an occasional beam of light in the form of Silberman’s voice or conventional
instrumentation. Parentheses owes much of its atmosphere to how a distant drum loop plays off a
falsetto and occasionally driving guitar, a purely foreboding kind of breakup song. No Widows plunks
and thumps along like a gothic outtake from Kid A, its eponymous refrain equal parts hopeful and
reproachful.
Still, though they evoke a song’s temperature like few other bands, it is almost a shame that a group
with this much talent for emotional purging seems so restrained. In an interview in advance of the
album, Silberman noted that “You can put it on and not feel like it has to be a severe emotional
experience,” but that hardly seems like a strength, at least given what we know The Antlers can do
when they decide to put you through a severe emotional experience.
Even here, the best moments are the ones that are the most naked, that seem precisely to avoid
hedging or withdrawal or middle-ground and, well, burst with pure emotion. Closer Putting the Dog to
Sleep is the finest example: opening with Silberman wailing “Prove to me / I’m not gonna die alone,” it
mixes languorous guitar hits and slow drums with an extended metaphor of a sick dog to come up with
a bleak but heart-crushing plea to get together. It might be a bit strong for a pick-up line, sure, but as
an expression of the emotional telos of so many hopeful glances across a room, it has a purity and
power that are hard to match.
THE ANTLERS SOUNDTRACK A BEAUTIFUL
BREAKDOWN AT GREAT AMERICAN
June 1, 2011
By Travis Bill
The Antlers
May 31, 2011
@ Great American Music Hall
Better Than: Actually being the subject of an Antlers song
The May 10th release of the Antlers' Burst Apart provoked some very specif ic imagery for
what kind of live experience the Brooklyn band would offer. From the effortless opening
chords to the record, one could picture the Antlers as the closing band in some off-the-strip
Vegas lounge. A man in a cheap white tux would saunter on stage and lazily introduce them
as "the band that will take you through the night," and the unassuming frontman Peter
Silberman would launch into his own particular brand of cinematic rock--one that would take
listeners on the brink of "down and out" and invite them towards comforting, personal stories
that were unafraid to cover death, love, and physical disintegration in specif ic, yet
rejuvenating ways.
As it turns out, the imagery suggested by the band's record translated almost perfectly in
between the cheaply gluttonous walls of Great American Music Hall. Playing all but one song
from Burst Apart, the Antlers captured the record's melodramatic mystique with all the comfort
of a lounge act, yet all of the emotional fragility of the bedroom pop outfit from which the band
originated. The live setting also allowed the band to break free from the condensed song
structures offered on the record. Shoegazing soundscapes peppered many of the bands
interludes, and Silberman and keyboardist Darby Cicci took turns looping guitar lines,
feedback drones, and everything in between.
The result was a much more expansive soundtrack than any Antlers studio work could
provide. The harrowing opener "Parentheses" reverberated with siren like shrieks that echoed
through the hall, while "Hounds" worked its way towards the opposite end of the band's
harmonic spectrum, moving lightly through arpeggiated guitar lines while Silberman gently
crooned in his ever-present falsetto.
For all their experimentation, though, the Antlers never fully abandoned the attention to detail
of their recorded work. Part of the intrigue of Burst Apart is its ability to make an impression,
but not overstay its welcome. In a set that lasted barely over an hour, the Antlers seemed to
find a solid medium between ornamentation and brevity. The songs they included from 2009's
Hospice, Silberman's tragic solo opus, were often sped up or made more poppy so that fans
wouldn't lose attention, while the already brief Burst Apart tracks were not abbreviated further,
but were allowed space to groove more freely.
The true star of the evening, though, was Silberman and his nearly faultless vocal
performance. One concern entering the evening was that Silberman's voice would waver
limply, as the lo-fi production of Hospice often allowed it to. This concern was quickly dashed,
as Silberman blazed confidently through "Parentheses" and "Kettering," a heartbreaking,
whispered track from Hospice that the frontman turned into a boldly proclaimed arrival.
Although his lyrics spoke of hospital beds and brutally proclaimed that "I didn't believe them
when they told me that there was no saving you," his voice resonated boldly, never allowing
the listener to fall apart that early in the show.
Only near the end did Silberman finally let his vocal performance slip. A singular vocal crack
during the ballad "Putting the Dog to Sleep" recalled the subject matter's disturbing content;
eventually the disciplined falsetto broke down entirely during the closer, "Wake," and
transformed into a torrential, emotive wail.
The imagery of a closing band at a Vegas casino was all too appropriate, because as
controlled as the Antlers could make human imperfection sound, they could never eliminate
the fatalism of Silberman's lyrics about hospice workers, dying loved ones, and aborted
dreams. In the end, the groups best laid plans would always devolve into murmurs of "some
patients can't be saved, but that burden's not on you" and shouts of "don't ever let anyone tell
you you deserve that." Looking around the Great American Music Hall on Tuesday night, one
could tell that the Antlers' audience could relate.
Tamed Tenderloin: After asking the audience to quiet down during encore track "Corsicana,"
the Great American crowd registered at a steady 8.7 out of 10 on the "funeral procession level
quiet" scale. Almost nobody said a word by the opening chords of "Wake."
Consummate Professional Award: Goes to Tim Mislock, who managed to change a guitar
string in less than a minute in between "Bear" and "Hounds"
Reviewer's Bias: This was the best non-Coachella set I've seen in 2011. I decided not to
bother with false criticism and just give a healthy fan-boy glow -- the performance deserved it.
Setlist:
Parentheses
Kettering
No Widows
I Don't Want Love
French Exit
Rolled Together
Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out
Bear
Hounds
Putting the Dog to Sleep
Encore:
Two
Corsicana
Wake
!