The Antlers, Hospice - Part I

November may be my favorite month. Fall has set in, it is a heavy time for heavy thought. We need to go deeper at this time of year. There needs to be more substance, more fuel for the fire to power us through. With this thought in mind, this month, and every November from this point on is going to take a look at not but a few measly songs, but a full Suicide Watch Album to be split up among the two post dates. For this inaugural installment we are going to look at the 2009 concept album Hospice by The Antlers

Hospice (Tracks 1-5), by The Antlers


http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=97A3A6DFC91721DA

The above playlist is of the first five songs off of the ten song album. The track titles are as follows:
1. Prologue
2. Kettering
3. Sylvia
4. Atrophy
5. Bear

I attempted to find interesting videos for the playlist. "Sylvia" and "Bear" are both official videos. "Prologue" and "Kettering" are fan made, and apparently no one has made a video yet for my favorite song of this half, "Atrophy"

You can download a PDF of the liner notes for the album direct from the band's website here: http://www.antlersmusic.com/linernotes.pdf  This will help fill in the gaps as I do not plan to disect every lyric on the album.

The Antlers started as a solo project by New Yorker, Peter Silberman. Originally Silberman recorded and released multiple Antlers recordings by himself. In 2007 he started work on Hospice, in the process enlisting help from musicians Michael Lerner and Darby Cicci. Hospice was originally released by the band themselves, and then later picked up and rereleased by Frenchkiss Records. Since that time it has gone on to huge success. Today we will look at the first half of Silberman's concept album opus, Hospice.

1. Prologue What better time to give you some background information but at the prologue. If interpreted as though we trust our narrator, the lyrics decree Hospice as the tale of a the relationship between a hospice worker and his patient . The prologue does so much to help paint this picture. Knowing that we start in a medical setting, doesn't the prologue show us and enhance this image? Those warning bells and beeping monitors are all distorted by the low hum of machines, and echo down those hallways so white and clean while the fluorescent lighting feels like its pulsing and burning into ones head. It's a place so strong, yet so out of place, filled with those so frail, but so certain.

2. Kettering, or Bedside Manner "Kettering" follows our introduction and gives us some exposition regarding our backstory. It starts "I wish that I had known in that first minute we met that unpayable debt that I owed you. Because you'd been abused by the bone that refused you, and you hired me to make up for that." A seemingly simple statement, but it can be taken a multitude of ways. What are we being hired for? Is the statement cut and dried, where one is hired for a job, or are we agreeing to something different, some ill-conceived plot, akin to a deal with the devil? What is the debt that our protagonist owed? What exactly is he making up for? 

There is a low oscillating fuzz throughout the entire song, but I always notice it during the line "the singing morphine alarms out of tune keep you sleeping and even..." It is a strong statement only to be flipped in the next verse to "You make me sleep and uneven, and I didn't believe them when they told me that  there was no saving you."  And we wait a moment, to then be plunged into a swirling depth of vocals, chords, drums, and noise, almost as if it took a while for the weight of that particular statement to hit us. The cacophony withdraws, but we are left feeling unresolved, and the song ends with a click, as though an effect was turned off on the recording, or maybe as though someone flipped a lightswitch and walked away.

3. Sylvia, or Sliding Curtains Shining Children's Heads  "Sylvia" starts with more of those distorted, processed tones. At first we are led to believe that they are just noise, ambiance raised to the level of awareness, but the pitches start to change and move. Finally there is a musical cadence and resolution and we are certain that this is harmonic material. What Silberman has done here is crossed that line between the music and the story, causing us to be unsure of where one ends and the other begins.

Our protagonist enters apologizing but uncertain of what he has done wrong. He tells Sylvia "You swing first." As the alarms fade into synth chords he begs "Let me do my job." We are then hit forcefully by the full band, and our protagonist yelling and pleading "Sylvia get your head out of the oven. Go back to screaming, and cursing. Remind me again how everyone betrayed you." We now understand that anger and resentment from Sylvia, and cowering and placation from our protagonist is the normal interaction between these two. The yelling stops, but the music continues. There is some kind of resolution, but there is still all this energy in the air, and then you hear buried beneath it all a hidden melodic phrase echoing and mirroring the chorus, like repeating the argument in your head. A calming verse follows, and then another chorus. After the chorus this time we get the same continuance as before, but this time with a harmonized horn line repeating the argument.

The music breaks apart and we're lost in free time with trickling noises that sound lost somewhere between rain, glass, and snow. The chorus comes back with a whisper and a light strum on the guitar and quietly as it started the song ends.

4. Atrophy, or Rings Ill-fitting is a song of introspection, and in that our protagonist sees that he is making his decisions while walking on eggshells around Sylvia. "You've been living awhile in the front of my skull, making orders. You've been writing me rules, shrinking maps, redrawing borders. I've been repeating your speeches, but the audience just doesn't follow. Because I've been leaving out words, punctuation, and it sounds pretty hollow." The audience doesn't get it, they don't understand. Who is this audience? Friends? relatives? It's everyone. Everyone thinks he's crazy for sticking around.
"Little porcelain figurines, glass bullets you shot at the wall. Threats of castration for crimes you imagine when I miss your call." Accusations of things that are so far from the truth. He's willing to do anything you ask, but he must be hurting you in someway, right? "With the bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger, I'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singer." They're married, and now for the most selfless lyric on the album, the proof of our protagonist's intention, and maybe also an insight into their psyche and why they would remain in such a bad situation "I'd happily take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself."
The song builds and eventually breaks into a reverbative fuzz. From that we come back once again to the solo singer with acoustic guitar "Someone, oh anyone, tell me how to stop this. She's screaming, expiring, and I'm her only witness. I'm freezing, infected, and rigid in that room inside her. No one's gonna come as long as I lay in bed beside her. " That's right, our protagonist has to get out of that bed himself. No one will come and help him, and if she is alone, then there is a reason for it.

5. Bear, or Children Become Their Parents Become Their Children In brilliant text painting, "Bear" opens up with an dreamy sounding electric piano playing with the melody of "Twinkle, Twinkle," hiding it just enough to make it not quite the familiar lullaby. "There's a bear inside your stomach, a cub's been kicking from within. He's loud, though without vocal cords, we'll put an end to him. We'll make all the right appointments, no one ever has to know, " I love the juxtaposition of the light, happy music, to the dark emotional subject matter of abortion.

The verse finishes and the full band comes in with the chorus of "We're too old. We're not old at all. Just too old. We're not old at all." Like a difference in perspective. Which one of them feels old? Which doesn't? Are they starting to realize how different they are?

The chorus resolves back to the minimalistic verse. "There's a bear inside your stomach, a cub's been kicking you for weeks, and if this isn't all a dream, well then we'll cut him from beneath. Well we're not scared of making caves, or finding food for him to eat. We're terrified of one another, terrified of what that means." We're not scared of terminating the pregnancy, or of taking care of the child, we are afraid of being parents, and more so, how the other will parent. "But we'll make only quick decisions, and you'll just keep me in the waiting room, and all the while I'll know we're fucked, and not getting unfucked soon." This is it. This is the event to tear us apart. "When we get home we're bigger strangers than we've ever been before. You sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor." We enter another chorus which builds and builds until...

I know, it's a horrible way to leave off. The final resolution is the first hit of the next track. (That is if you're listening to the album version, the video hits it.) Anywho, I suppose we'll have to wait. Come back on the fifteenth to see what happens, same Suicide Watch, same Suicide channel.

As always, feel free to comment here or at suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net