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Fun Fun Fun review: Antlers
Peter Silberman, the frontman for the Brooklyn-based Antlers, is a twig. But man, does that guy have a voice.
When he first took the Orange Stage on Saturday afternoon, Silberman’s fragile falsetto matched his stature. The band eased into “Kettering,” the first proper song on last year’s “Hospice,” but soon broke from the flow of the song’s lamenting piano chords to burst into “Sylvia.” Silberman’s voice wailed wildly in an impossibly high register, soaring above the anthemic build of feedback and synthesizers. When it was time for a guitar solo, he stumbled back and forth between the drum set and the mike, aggressively punching out a few atmospheric notes way up the neck of the guitar.
To a much greater degree than on “Hospice,” Darby Cicci’s synth lines created an ear-tickling, spacey atmosphere. Armed with Moog and Korg synthesizers, as well as a Rhodes piano, Cicci brought the buzzes, swooshes and gargles to the foreground of each song, rather than letting them hang in the background as they generally do on the album. And coupled with Michael Lerner’s syncopated, fill-laden drum work, the thundering low-end of the synths created a rib-rattling dynamic.
If anything didn’t fit the festival’s sunny backdrop, it was the painfully self-eviscerating nature of the songs. The repeated mentions of doctors, hospitals and bedsides on “Hospice” certainly develop the theme of the album. But when songwriters underline their pain so many times with such a thick line, it can weigh you down. So it was nice when Silberman broke from his desperate cries to give the audience a sugary taste of upbeat melody with “Two” before closing out the set.
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