Brooklyn's indie scene can feel like a series of bands each trying to be hipper than the next, but thankfully nobody told Pete Silberman. In the dog days of 2009's deadbeat summer, the Antlers frontman emerged from his bedroom with his third LP, Hospice. On it, he unfashionably embraced hackles-raising choruses and concept-album ambition, and he pushed the button on emotional nuclear options: abortion, cancer, death, all that fun stuff. Now a trio, the Antlers have claimed the influence of "electronic music" for Burst Apart, a typical omen for a typically "difficult follow-up album." But while Burst Apart sheds the PR-bait bio and Arcade Fire aspirations that made its predecessor a word-of-mouth success, it's still tethered to a magnanimity and expressive clarity that makes it almost every bit as devastating.
Lead single "Parentheses" didn't do much to show their hand; it's pretty misleading out of context. Sounding like a higher-BPM "Climbing Up the Walls", the knockabout electronic percussion and tweaked piano ripples rightfully marked some connection to the post-OK Computer, pre-Kid A application of Mo' Wax and Warp textures to alt-rock song structures. But the aggression in Silberman's falsetto and the gnarly guitar distortion are revealed as total outliers, and Burst Apart can actually be seen as Hospice turned inside out: Where before, long swathes of calm white noise linked emotive outcries, Burst Apart moves patiently through luxurious downtempo tones belying some serious romantic disturbance.
Those well-versed in dream journal interpretation could gather that from the mere title of "Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out" (a common symbolic manifestation of sexual frustration). After all, Burst Apart does open with "I Don't Want Love", a heartbreaking wallow in a numbing hangover from a singer who previously seemed doomed to feel too much. Its glistening melody at least helps it scan as pop, but "Parentheses" and "Every Night" feel cut from the same cloth as the Walkmen's "The Rat", holding onto sanity with white knuckles, sexual congress seen as mutually assured destruction.
Aside from those, Burst Apart's atmosphere is nocturnal and desolate. Foreboding death-crawl "No Widows" fears for vehicular disaster; brief flickers of light are allowed full exposure on the gorgeous, incantatory centerpiece "Rolled Together", whose brushed drum work and silvery guitars could be heard as a studiously completed homework assignment on Agaetis Byrjun. Meanwhile, the tender, nearly beatless balladry of "Hounds" and "Corsicana" are wholly the Antlers' own and painfully pretty to behold-- however depressive Silberman's lyrics, one can simply revel in the zero-gravity synth and vocal moans and feel some sort of uplift.
Shame that it makes Burst Apart's missteps all too egregious. This isn't the sort of record that calls for a show-stopping power ballad, but we get one anyway with "Putting the Dog to Sleep", where needlessly histrionic vocals and an overwrought doo-wop progression come off more like last call karaoke than a fitting closer. If nothing else, "Putting the Dog to Sleep" helps point toward the Antlers successfully making Burst Apart more about their growth as a band than a gripping backstory-- for all of Hospice's raw power, it didn't leave much to the imagination, and it either hit you right in the gut or not at all. The Antlers won't hold your hand through Burst Apart, which will inevitably make it more of a grower, but stick around-- it's all the more affecting for how it allows you to pick your own stumbling, lonely path.
