This phrase is about as pretentious a cliché as there is in music, but here goes: It’s hard to describe what The Antlers sound like to someone who hasn’t heard them before. That also means it’s hard to say what they’ll sound like May 30, when they take the stage at Madison’s High Noon Saloon, but we know it’ll be good.
The Brooklyn-based band has one of the more unique sounds in their genre today, and as a result it’s damn hard to put down in writing exactly what that sound is. Reviewers have gone with “richly atmospheric” and “electro-organic” (the AV Club), “swaddling typically despondent lyrics in gorgeous electronic textures” (the Guardian) and “nocturnal and desolate” (Pitchfork), among others.
Here’s my shot at it: Led by frontman Peter Silberman’s falsetto vocals and backed by guitars that ebb and flow with a song’s emotion, the trio creates songs that are at once deeply personal in themes while oddly mechanical, unfeeling and bordering on sinister. According to Silberman, he wants his music to “imply being disoriented.”
“That has become a goal of ours in writing, and maybe always has been, is to kind of bend reality a little bit with music,” Silberman said. “Just distort it—to feel very human, but also this weird, modulated version of reality that we’re trying to create.”
No matter what adjectives you land on to describe it, though, The Antlers’ music is as fascinating as it is complex, and will make for an exceptional live experience, especially in the comparatively intimate High Noon. Though Silberman said he enjoyed playing in front of large audiences on The Antlers’ recent four-city swing through Europe, he said he is excited to get back to smaller crowds that are more connected to the band.
“It’s the kind of show that we’ll get to play where it feels very personal,” he said. “It feels very intimate, as opposed to as we get into these bigger theaters... you’re naturally a little more removed.”
That intimacy is key for The Antlers, whose music has for a long time played heavily on dark and raw emotion. Their 2009 debut, Hospice, told the story of a hospice worker’s relationship with a terminally ill patient, and though Silberman says the emotional burnout from that album led him to “mellow out” on Burst Apart, it still strikes for the heart in a number of places.
It’s true that Burst Apart’s heartbreakers (“I Don’t Want Love” and “Putting the Dog to Sleep”) are matched by some more aggressive songs (“Parentheses” and “Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out”), but in the smaller confines of the High Noon the emotional ones should make for the most engaging experience.
“We want it to feel like our shows are a shared experience,” Silberman said, “and that we’re all in it together, and going through something together.”
The Antlers will play the High Noon Saloon on East Washington Avenue, with Milwaukee rockers Sat. Nite Duets opening.
