Wednesday, February 25, 2009

ALBUM: Hospice

The Antlers (AKA Peter Silberman) are set to release their second full-length album on March 3rd, called Hospice. From the band's website:

"When he moved to Manhattan in the winter of 2006, Peter Silberman, disappeared for a year and a half. He stayed cocooned in his apartment, hiding away from friends, family, and most of the city. When Silberman emerged in the spring of 2007, he was twenty-one, liberated, and broken. He set out to explain his absence through a record that would take another year and a half to complete."

The record is a concept album of sorts, exploring loneliness and hopelessness via the cold and austere atmosphere of a hospital/hospice ward. While much of the album lies in the ethereal and ambient realm, there are some moments of quiet beauty where Silberman's lonely falsetto shines through the haze, acting like a little beam of light in an otherwise grey vista. Below are two of those moments. The first is 'Sylvia', a clanging and crescendo-ing piece, and a good representation of the record as a whole. The second is 'Two', which made its way around the internet last year, and which succeeds at being both a memorably beautiful and a remarkably heart-breaking song. The melody-line is simple but profoundly moving, and the adamently strum guitar provides the perfect back-bone to Silberman's woeful narrative.

The Antlers - Sylvia
from the album Hospice (pre-order here)


The Antlers - Two
from the album Hospice (pre-order here)


Click here for more mp3s.

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