There comes a time in a band’s tenure—that is, a good band—when the release of a particular album affords them the accolades of critics and listeners alike. The hype machine is turned up to 11 and the process of integration and assimilation begins. The album is picked over, micro-intellectualized, and wholly stripped of its mystery. And upon first release 2009’s Hospice, the third album by The Antlers, was given this strenuous treatment. But it resisted. It came packaged with so much dense storytelling and purposeful despair that at first it completely stopped this process in its tracks. Over the following months, the full story of its terminally ill protagonist came to light and Hospice was canonized by some as a milestone in indie rock realism.
I make mention of the circumstances surrounding the release and reception of Hospice because the feared “follow-up to a great record” expectations, which are inevitably going to be leveled at their newest album Burst Apart, are hardly fair as it feels slightly different than their last one, though it does still retain some of the elements which made that album to interesting. The pallor of death still surrounds these stories of worried fates and darkly threatening fears, and the intensely personal lyrics are still first and foremost the centerpiece of these songs but the emotional resolutions lacking on Hospice are here given full room to expand and resolve as The Antlers thoughtfully dissect the darkness which surrounds them, and as such, the utter despair and inevitability of death held over from that album still hang loosely across these 10 tracks. The psychological fuck-up of principle Antler Peter Silberman is still intact, as are his neuroses concerning mortality. But surprisingly, we do get brief glimpses of the light filtering in through the cracks in the dark. They’re not overwhelming to any degree and are used sparingly to contrast with the still overarching theme of mental and physical degradation. Songs like the ripe-for-interpretation “Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out” and the emotionally benumbed “I Don’t Want Love” show that despite what we may have thought we knew about Silbermann, he now sees himself as having a dulled, senseless grasp on the world and his place in it, as opposed to feeling every intricate hurt and moment of pain that ran through Hospice. And it’s in this new realization that the epiphanies which have eluded him for so long now coarse through him and wrap themselves around the notes of these songs. Through this emotional dichotomy which has afforded him the ability to venture through both pain and numbness, he affords himself, and us as listeners, a brief moment of rest, where the pain of a minute ago has yet to resolve into the numb acceptance of its continuation.
Tracklisting:
01. I Don’t Want Love
02. French Exit
03. Parentheses
04. No Widows
05. Rolled Together
06. Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out (listen to the mp3 below)
07. Tiptoe
08. Hounds
09. Corsicana
10. Putting the Dog to Sleep
No comments:
Post a Comment