The Antlers – “Hospice” –Released in (2009; Frenchkiss Records) is the third studio album by American indie rock The Antlers, and their first concept album . It was initially self-distributed by the band in March 2009, and was then eventually remastered and re-released.
Part of what makes a concept album truly work is the narrative it’s beholden to. Hospice is a grizzly and harrowing work, which seeks—if nothing else—to completely hollow you as a human being. Dealing with a hospice worker’s romantic entanglement with a patient with terminal bone cancer, Hospice is an album with a palpable feeling of mournful hopelessness.
Singer Peter Silberman’s vocal styling is responsible for at least 50 percent of the latent intensity of the narrative, a quivering whisper of toiling emotions, annunciating with ruthless efficiency a narrative of intense tragic beauty, backed by the sometimes gigantic walls of sound produced by the band, as if to jolt you from the dreamy vocal patterns. It is passionate, powerful and pragmatic in its vision of a relationship that is cultivated through frailty and exposed through its own flaws. Hospice is a direct narrative of suffering without any obfuscation at all, its music perfectly pairing with the rollercoaster anyone experiences in a relationship, with an ending that either uplifts and destroys
The album was released to critical acclaim. Music blogs endorsed the re-release of Hospice with their “Best New Music” stamp. NPR Radio placed the album at number one on their list of the top ten albums of early 2009. At the end of the year, praising its “power to emotionally destroy listeners
Personnel
- Peter Silberman – vocals, guitar, accordion, harmonica, harp, keyboards
- Darby Cicci – trumpet, bowed banjo
- Michael Lerner – drums, percussion
- Justin Stivers – bass
- Sharon Van Etten – vocals on “Kettering,” “Thirteen,” “Two,” and “Shiva”
The Fat Angel Sings 