This past weekend, I hopped a couple of subway trains east into Brooklyn to go to church. The church — the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights — was one I had never been to, representing a faith I did not subscribe to. Like countless others who'd come before me since its construction in 1844, I was going to this church to pay tribute and to make peace, and as I sat among a couple hundred fellow parishioners in its Gothic sanctuary, I readied myself to make an offering.
None of us was necessarily there to worship, or speak of deities or apocryphal lessons to carry with us as we eventually broke our huddle later, but we all came with a shared faith and, in my case, a need to reflect on the last 10 years, both to remember how we were and how far we've come.
What had pulled us all to that Brooklyn church on a Saturday night was the Antlers, the part-drone, part-post-rock outfit fronted by Peter Silberman that, like all of us sitting in the wooden pews that ached and groaned at every shift, had undergone a transformation of its own in the 10 years since releasing its benchmark third album, Hospice. Touring for the first time in nearly five years, and minus Hospice, Burst Apart, and Familiars collaborator Darby Cicci, this new version of the Antlers had reemerged to announce its transition into the future by acknowledging and making peace with its past.
That past is composed of more than just Hospice, but that album is the calling card by which the Antlers are largely known, the rare concept album that realizes all its ambitions, both narratively and emotionally. Hospice tells the story of an abusive relationship from the perspective of a hospice worker and a terminally-ill patient. It is still, at its most affecting moments, an overwhelming force of an album, with its themes of love, loss, and emotional trauma often interwoven and layered. Helping the cause is a ghostly, spectral set of production values that often leaned on reverb and drone, the same sounds that, when played live, doubtlessly played into Silberman's partial hearing loss; part of the impetus for the Antlers to take a break and for Silberman to put his quieter side on display with a solo album, 2017's Impermanence.
Something had to give. If the band were to continue and Silberman were to keep his hearing, the Antlers of old could no longer exist. Part of that was taken care of with Cicci's departure, sure, but no matter who surrounded Silberman, the band's louder days were long gone. And so Silberman and the rest of the re-imagined Antlers — original drummer Michael Lerner and newly-added guitarist-cum-opening-act Tim Mislock — have come back without the full force of reverb and drone that dominated the band's Hospice-era tours and the shows in the years thereafter, deciding instead to play Hospice in full, acoustically. The results are nothing short of stunning.
For all of the energy a sold-out arena can provide, I find nothing more powerful than a show that hold fast to reverence: Julien Baker in a pindrop-quiet Mercury Lounge; the National in a wood-floored multipurpose room in Cold Spring, NY; Lucius coming out to the middle of the floor at Terminal 5 to play an acoustic encore; are two of my fondest concert memories, not for the size of the crowds in attendance but for the intimacy of the shows put on. In that Brooklyn church pew, some four rows from the very back of the lower level, I found myself settling in to that same sweet spot I'd experienced in those other concert moments. Pared back to two guitars and a single snare drum, the songs of Hospice took on a new life. As soon as the album's first lyrics emerged from Silberman following the re-interpreted instrumental opening of "Prologue," the old idea of Hospice began to melt away.
The arrangements weren't complicated, nor did they need to be. SIlberman's voice, still as smooth as it was a decade ago, hit tremendous falsetto highs, and carried all the weight the songs' melodies demanded he carry. More a solemn command than an ethereal plea, as it was on the record, the pre-chorus croon of "let me do my job" on cathartic standout single "Sylvia" seemed to carry an extra edge: Nearly robbed of his livelihood by the scare of hearing loss, Silberman was back on stage to bat back the demons that had nearly cost him everything he'd earned in his musical career. Same goes for the incredible recreation of Sharon Van Etten's ghostly howls of "pull me out, dig me out" from "Thirteen" on through the triumphs of "don't ever let anyone tell you you deserve that" on the penultimate "Wake," all while Lerner's steady percussion and Mislock's supportive harmonies helped carry the day.
If I met the me of 10 years ago on the street, I probably wouldn't recognize him. I know I wouldn't like his clothes. I definitely wouldn't understand anything he'd talk about. But he's part of me just the same. And though Silberman and company probably don't associate themselves as strongly with Hospice as they once did, it's part of them just the same. The band and crowd inside First Unitarian that night gathered together to tip a cap to our younger selves before turning and walking off onto some new, hopefully brighter future.
