When I spoke with Antlers’ frontman Peter Silberman about his graphic design day job I asked him, considering the name and themes of Hospice, whether or not he had any past experience caring for the sick:
I think I’ve found myself in relationships that have felt more like jobs, staggeringly uneven amounts of taking care of another person. One of those involved a lot of time in a hospital. That’s where the record came from. Sometimes we were in a hospital, and often times the hospital followed us home.
That info adds another layer to the Brooklyn trio’s animated Ethan Segal and Albert Thrower-directed “Two” video. The clips finds each Antler performing the heartbreaking song alone in his respective apartment: Colorful shapes emerge from their instruments and leak out into the city, like the music’s supposed to fill up as many empty spaces as possible. When that doesn’t do the trick, the Silberman figure gets all torn up.
(Via P4K)
“There was glass inside my feet / And raining down from the ceiling, / It opened up the scars / that had just finished healing”:
Hospice is out via Frenchkiss.
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This guy has really annoying vocals.
Bubble-blowing guitar!!!
Yep, this band is really overrated and unoriginal. I saw them this past weekend when they opened up for Dinosaur Jr. at a secret show. I think the heckler in the crowd summed it up best when he yelled out, “Next week, on House…!” They were so boring live, every song sounded the same and the Dino Jr. fans especially were not into it. It really just came off as the Brooklyn version of Coldplay. Just listening to this song sounds like the indie version of Coldplay’s “Strawberry Swing” actually.
comparing this to strawberry swing made me want to listen to it more, actually. i dont think there were any similarities, but i enjoyed the song.
don’t slam them that much, just look at their liner notes:
http://www.antlersmusic.com/linernotes.pdf
if you put proper punctuation to their lyrics, they turn into short stories, ok? and how cool is that?
@Overrated I completely disagree. There’s a lot of prosody here and the singer handles it gracefully. His voice is double tracked and mixed back in the beginning of the song but, if you listen to the whole tune, I think you’ll see that there was a conscious decision made to produce them in that manner. As the song progresses the lead vocals begin to cut through more; this works well with the lyrical content and helps to build the tune. Great job all around in my book.
@Hang these Antlers Sure the sound isn’t wholly unique but it’s extremely well executed. And what is really original these days? I think Frank Zappa put it best when he said that “All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”
No, its not even well executed, especially live. It was the most boring, vapid and derived half hour of music I have ever heard. The same goes for their recorded material. Its just wussy delicate sh-t that should just be thrown into a dumpster with a barrel of gas and a match for good measure. Each of their songs just builds up, then comes to a dramatic hault in the midst, then does the same on repeat. Get over this garbage. If you’re going to be derivative, at least do it well.
Oh and you sound like that type of guy (if you are a guy) that cries like a bitch when his girl dumps him. That’s the core audience of The Antlers, at least.
man, you are a cunt
While I agree that they are underwhelming, they are not THAT bad. They have some nice poppy songs but they take themselves too seriously for me to enjoy most of their work. The comparison with Coldplay is very accurate.
Jeez the last post about the antlers there was only praise in the comments, I guess with praise comes backlash
Duh, it’s been 5 minutes. Everybody’s SO over them. I liked them back when they were just a notion.
You know you’ve really made it if you can inspire such fervid hatred among stereogum commenters. So congrats Antlers, I guess.
Not sure why they are opening up for Dinosaur Jr. though, I can understand why the audience wouldn’t be as receptive to their sensitive-guy indie folk in that setting. Something like Bon Iver or St. Vincent would be a much better fit for them.
I kinda liked Hospice. But, yeah nothing new here. I really don’t like this song.