The Antlers have never shied away from encroaching the most painful and heart wrenching moments in a neatly packaged song; this was evident from their 2009 release Hospice, an album that at times was so hauntingly raw, it made for thought-provoking listening. Following up from this was their 2011 release Burst Apart which went some way to distance the emotional melodrama that Hospice was. The five piece New York based band are back with their new LP Familiars.
The album opens with the track ‘Palace’ which is gently eased in by piano and horns; this is familiar territory for The Antlers. For all intents and purposes this is a mournful opener to the album, and regular listeners of the Antlers will have the familiar feeling of straining their ears to hear past the distortion and echo to focus on the voice and stories that Ben Silberman so intricately weaves.
‘He left the tallest peak of your paradise, buried in the bottom of a canyon in hell.’
‘Doppelganger’ bares a distinct theatrical essence and wouldn’t be out of place in a Noir production. From the trumpet intro to the distorted background this has an underlying sinister tone.
‘If you’re quiet, you can hear the monster breathing…Do you hear that gentle tapping? My ugly creature’s freezing’
Ben Silberman has never been afraid to split open his persona and spill his emotions and inner most fears to the listener. Doppelganger is a song of a man trying to find himself.
While on the surface ‘Hotel’ is positively upbeat in comparison to tracks on Hospice, the lyrics suggest indifference, a void: ‘In the hotel, I can’t remember how the past felt, But in a strange bed, I keep sleeping with my past self‘ a wise motto to not to live in the past and to escape what you once were.
‘Refuge’, the closing track of the album, is, in The Antlers normal narrative style, the closing to the story.
A reflective song, mellow in tune with the company of trumpet and sweet guitar tabs which slowly build to a chilling climax and just as quickly ebb away.
Familiars challenge the very core of being, forcing you to visit those questions which are painful to confront: Who you are, why you are that way and if you can really change; the ultimate internal struggle to alter oneself into a new bettered version.
The Antlers, instrumentally, will never be a band to shatter boundaries, however lyrically and in terms of the suspense the band can muster through the use of Silberman’s haunting vocals and Cicci’s crisp horn work, they are a band which are developing and evolving with each release. The Antlers are like no other band; they are incomparable because they are in their own league
Check out the video for ‘Palace’, the first single to be released off the new album
