Review by Kyle Spencer; Photos by Vanessa Fleming
Within the cozy confines of Union Hall, The Antlers debuted their new album Hospice; an album composed of a rewarding blend of atmospheric soundscapes and shoe gazing rock. Hearing the album played live in its entirety offered the patient listener a full range of sonic peaks and valleys.
Songs like “Sylvia” and “Bear”, in which the drumming was more prevalent or pronounced, felt climatic (at times thunderous) when accentuated by the proximity of songs like “Atrophy” which featured the more delicate attributes of The Antler’s guitar and keyboard combo.
I’ve seen countless concerts at union hall and it’s rare to hear a band actually overcome the restricting space and poor acoustics of the basement venue. The Antlers sound came through loud and clear. The occasional feedback could be excused or pasted off as intentional. Peter Silberman’s vocals sounded outstanding live and presented an operatic layer to the music.
While I can’t say The Antler’s present anything that’s genuinely original in their music, they have taken from some of the best and forged a very promising conglomeration of sounds and influences. The bio on their website describes them as a fusion of ‚”Neutral Milk Hotel or Okkervil River with the grandiosity of Sigur Ros, Cursive, or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, finished by the shimmery haze of My Bloody Valentine and heightened by Silberman’s Jeff-Buckley-like vocals.” That’s quite a wish list, but the album’s definitely worth checking out. You can stream it in its entirety, here.
Click through for more photos below the jump…
After reading Lola’s post concerning the statistical reasons for my involuntary celibacy, I did a little research on the guy behind the stats, a Caltech Ph.D. student named Virgil Griffith. Turns out he’s something of a pop culture Nate Silver, using his borderline-autistic love of numbers to enlighten erstwhile web surfers about all things shallow and amusing.
Just last week, it seems, he put the finishing touches on a little chart that classifies musicians based on the relative SAT scores of their fans. To do this, he compiled different colleges’ favorite bands via Facebook and matched these acts up to the respective schools’ SAT scores. The results, while pretty far from scientifically significant, are at least amusing. According to the numbers, Lil Wayne fans score the lowest (856-896) and Beethoven’s admirers are by far the smartest (1346-1396). Other revelations: fans of the Used and gospel music are idiots compared to the genius admirers of Sufjan, Radiohead, and Counting Crows (?), while people into Something Corporate and Yellowcard are, as expected, totally average.
The complete chart after the jump (hat tip to The Grip).
Image courtesy of P4K
The folks at Pitchfork have announced the first few bands on the bill for their 2k9 musical festival, and the lineup looks solid thus far. In addition to FREEwilliamsburg friends the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Grizzly Bear, the Chicago festival will feature the first American performance by the Jesus Lizard in over a decade. The bands announced today: Friday, July 17
Built to Spill
The Jesus Lizard
Yo La Tengo
Tortoise Saturday, July 18
The National
Pharoahe Monch
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart Sunday, July 19
Grizzly Bear
The Walkmen
Vivian Girls
Also, if you shell out for a ticket, you’ll be able to vote online for what songs you want the four first-night bands to play. Not quite as cool of a gimmick as seeing Public Enemy perform It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in its entirety, but it’s not without its charms. Tickets go on sale 3/13.
image via
And not just for us… even Hollywood is reeling from the recession. First Shannen Doherty decides to take a second job as art director for a magazine. Then Michael auctions off some classics at Julien’s. And now, Kanye contemplates his roots as a video game designer:
“My game was very sexual,” West told Details Magazine. “The main character was, like, a giant penis. It was like Mario Brothers, but the ghosts were, like, vaginas. Mind you, I’m 12 years old, and this is stuff 30-year-olds are programming. You’d have to draw in and program every little step — it literally took me all night to do a step, ’cause the penis, y’know, had little feet and eyes.”
Well, I guess Kanye is pretty well off at this point and prooooobably doesn’t need to return to his previous *ahem* passion ’cause Kanye, y’know, has his game on.
Sometimes it’s a Thursday after a goddamn blizzard in March and you’re thinking, “Why am I looking forward to summer? What is so great about it being really hot out and wearing t-shirts?” Then you remember, “Oh yeah, The Gathering of The Juggalos!” I mean, if you were me you’d probably think all that. But after you see this video the “you” won’t be “me,” it’ll be YOU! You will be excited for The Gathering of The Juggalos! Because of Andrew WK! Because he killed it at The Gathering of The Juggalos just last summer and I bet you didn’t know that!
Guy needs to write a book (and you know he’d write one 8 inches thick) about how to turn irrelevancy into irreverance(y) as a freaking career.
I’m just gonna end all my posts with sweet pics.
We’ve been enjoying the new record by The Antlers, Hospice, released March 3. All Songs Considered puts it at the top of their best music of 2009 (thus far) list. The project is essentially one person, 23 year old Peter Silberman, but he’ll be playing with his band (Michael Lerner, Darby Cicci) tonight at Union Hall. The entire album is steaming over at Bandcamp and here’s a couple of MP3s: DOWNLOAD:The Antlers: Bear (MP3) DOWNLOAD:The Antlers: Two (MP3)
We’ve also been enjoying Neko Case’s latest, Middle Cyclone. It’s her strongest work since Blacklisted and contains some of her best songs to date. We can’t stop listening to “This Tornado Loves You.”
Here’s a great in the studio video of the first single, “People Got a Lot of Nerve:”
