Prologue

Broken and alone is the best way to experience The Antlers perfect album Hospice. This Take Away Show exemplifies that. Get ready to drink, you're going to need it. Crafting any best of 2009 list has to include Hospice and Peter Silberman's limitless, Jeff Buckley-esque voice.

Also, if you're a fan, you MUST have their live performance of Sylvia live in NYC (click here).

Dear Death: Hey What's Going On

Dear Death,

Hey! The worst feeling in the world you gave us is to dream during a high fever. I fell asleep once with one a 103 and one of those waterfall-rock tumblers running- the sensation still leaves the taste of copper in my mouth of dread, fear and night terrors as sharp as teeth. The Antlers know what the hell I'm talking about. This is from their song "Shiva" (see attached).

"My femur was breaking was breaking in half / the sensation was scissors and too much to scream"

Yikes! A wise man once said, there is nothing darker and lonelier than a fever. You feel nails on dry wall, cotton in the mouth. If that's true, tonight's Antlers show in Fort Worth, Texas will induce an increase in body temperature. Can't wait.

PS, listen to The Antlers Daytrotter session and feel yourself wriggle.

The Antlers - Shiva (Daytrotter Session)

Just Live Videos, No Target

Does anyone else feel weird about Pearl Jam having a Target commercial? Exclusive content at Target? Weirder that the ad ran before The Antlers video on Pitchfork: TV. So I stopped it, and listened to this NPR gem instead. Far better than the studio cut, I think, "Two" is sweeter than the rest of darkness of "Hospice" (listen to "Kettering" below). Plus, their crystalline, opening guitar comes out nice and pretty in this video. Buy "Hospice," and think about your death.

The Antlers - Kettering

Album Review: The Antlers Hospice & Brendan Benson

Two polar opposites. Brendan Benson has grace. It's alive and bright. The album opens with "A Whole Lot Better," a illuminated-blue Strokes-esque love song that introduces you (if you're unfamiliar with his waxings) to his Bowie sides, with that acid IV-drip guitar of the Who, and you know, The Killers or something (God, don't you hate Killers comparison's?).

According to Aquarium Drunkard's well-drawn interview, Brendan is keen on writing compulsively, and has no problems referring to his music as retro, power pop. Coming from the Raconteurs, "My Old Familiar Friend" is refreshing. "Garbage Day," one of the better tracks on the album, is succinct, sweet, and humble:

"If she throws her heart away / I'll be there on Garbage Day"

So maybe this is power pop. It definitely has a Jamie Lidell, I-became-a-twenty-something-in the-90's-vibe, but Benson explores more and is more adventurous than say, Filter (God, I hate Filter references). I wasn't a big fan of "Gonowhere"'s unsoaring melodies and the synth heavy "Feel like Take You Home." "You Make A Fool Out of Me" varies between minimalistic ballad and a interlude cut track from Moulin Rouge--which works well. It's pretty. As a whole the album has the confidence of an experienced songwriter and a good musician, but is weighted by tropes of the power pop or retro or rock genre. Benson, however, seems to know this and embraces it. Ten years from now, I envision cars on a southern highway, like Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, slamming their steering wheel in pure song elation to "Poised and Ready," or anything Benson graces us with.


I'm biased - I have a proclivity for bizarre, dark-romance indie rock like The Antlers. It opens with a sound I imagined made to imitate the burst of light when you die (so it is read). "Prologue" is beautiful and scratchy, unlike it's poppy doppelganger: "Two" (which definitely is about death). Since Dark Side of the Moon, it's been easy and lovable to open an album with the sounds of quietly leaving your body. The Antlers love this. "Kettering" dances in ascension; a smoky and quiet tribute to the the thunderstorm -

"When they called you a hurricane thundercloud / When I was checking vitals / I suggested a smile / You didn't talk for a while"

The phrase "slow burn" comes to mind. And images of smoke. Unlike its smoke elements, Hospice has density and heart. "Two" has scintillating imagery and electricity even in it's uncharacteristic (from the rest of the album) emo-ness romanticism. Greatness is abound, Shelley or that curly haired freak Byron might say, and "Hospice" is pretty and dark.

The Antlers - Kettering

Brendan Benson- Garbage Day

Two of Us Riding Nowhere

What is it about movie trailer songs? First let me say - I like this song. It's catchy and exciting:

"I didn't mind you blaming me for your mistakes,
I just held you in the doorframe through all of the earthquakes.
But you packed up your clothes in that bag every night,
and I would try to grab your ankles (what a pitiful sight.)"

But this is emo. Emo seems like a cute word for melodrama, that term for the song in your Springtime drama film trailer, the one where the characters blink and cry in slow motion. I'm fine with that if the song is airy, climactic and smart. It helps to have cool construction paper animation & real footage of lighthouses by directors Ethan Segal and Albert Thrower.

The Antlers - Two