This isn’t a brand new album that just came out but it’s relatively new and I had just gotten a hold of it the past week, so back off!!! The band is The Antlers and the album is Hospice and together it makes the best sleepy rock album I’ve heard since Beach House’s Devotion. The music on the album is very slow and melodic and could fall under the categories of Indie, psychedelic, ambient and experimental rock or you could just say they sound like The Antlers. Despite how you label them they are on the way up and I had first heard their single “Kettering” which has a slow ambient feel to it, with quiet lyrics that lead into a pre-Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd outro which is reoccuring throughout the album. The band itself is relatively new and was originally just lead singer Peter Silberman who had recorded demos when he first moved into his apartment in Brooklyn, New York. Within two years he would recruit Michael Lerner and Darby Cicci to create The Antlers so he could add depth to his music and start releasing EP’s as a group independently.
The band received some underground success throughout the Indie scene in New York but when Hospice was released by the band it had immediately gained attention in the music industry and was picked up by French Kiss Records and remastered. The band were quoted in saying “they had bit off more then they could chew” with their first full release and didn’t even know how to react to the new found success that had arisen. The album itself is deep with it’s long songs in “Atrophy” and “Wake” which all have passionate lyrics and very unique instrumentation that gives the band their sleepy quiet rock sound. The album has a concept in that it tells a sad story about a man who is in a dying relationship in which he relates it to cancer in that it’s beyond repair and she won’t make it through. He uses a great verse in the song to explain the relationship in the song “Bear” that goes “ And you’ll just keep my in the waiting room. And all the while i’ll know we’re fucked. And not getting unfucked soon. When we get home we’re bigger strangers than we’ve ever been before.” Pretty sad stuff to say the least but it’s not an album to put on for those sunny days of lounging on the beach but more for those cold rainy nights when you can’t sleep. I have only had a listen through once for this album but I’m extremly excited after it and expect to have this playing on my iPod all winter along.
