The Antlers- Burst Apart

Last summer I was going through a pretty difficult break – up, the one thing that got me through it was The Antlers’ 2009 release Hospice, an album that had broke the mold of albums released in the summer of 2009 for it’s bleak outlook but also for its intriguing concept of a failed relationship told between a dying patient and his nurse. What frontman Peter Silberman did with that album was push the button on a remote full of emotions providing allusions to cancer, death, and all that other depressing stuff that makes you feel utterly hopeless.

Fast forward to 2011 and the antler’s have now become bitten by the electronic big of music for Burst Apart, something that is all but commonly known as being difficult for a “follow-up album” and becomes one that is equally as devastating if not more. The albums single Parenthesis was bland when it was first released and anyone who was unfamiliar with The Antlers would have found it to be strikingly similar to Radiohead’s “Climbing up The walls,” the overall sound and textures of electronic percussion and pebble rippled piano chords, are directly from Radiohead’s playbook. Yet the aggression and despair in Silberman’s falsetto along with the distortion of guitars act as a way of allowing the band to sound unique, one could say Burst Apart acts a balancer to Hospice: where you had a sound that contained “swaths of white noise” with painful cries of yearning, Burst Apart on the other hand plays a more down tempo role that provides a sense of unbearable emotional disturbance.

The albums opener I Don’t Want to Love, channels the essence of a broken heart, and the endless torment that goes along with it that only cheap alcohol can seem to mend. Looking past Burst Apart’s barren ambience. There are instances of pop music peppered through out, more particularly the tracks Every Night My Teeth are Falling Out; Silberman’s vocals are one part falsetto one part crooning that flows like good gin, and on Parentheses, which once again sounds similar to that of Radiohead. The albums closer and the most damaging song on the album Putting the Dog to Sleep drifts back to what The Antlers are known for and that is writing heartbreaking songs in lucid dream like states. The hits from the snare, and the abrupt shots of guitar strumming build onto the intensity of the sorrow and almost act as someone fighting to hold back hysterical tears.