"In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up, when a doctor came to tell me, 'Enough is enough.' He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted), and told me something that I didn't know that I wanted to hear: That there was nothing that I could do to save you. The choir's gonna sing, and this thing is gonna kill you. Something in my throat made my next words shake, and something in the wires made the lightbulbs break." ~the antlers




Sorry I've been MIA for awhile. I meant to write a concert post for The Antlers at Bowery Ballroom, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I've been feeling lazy. It's been really hot lately (it got up to 90 degrees today), and I think that's contributing to my laziness. Anyway, it was a great concert. We got there really early and were dead center in the front row, as usual. The Antlers played their entire new album except for the instrumental song "Tiptoe." They also played a few favorites from Hospice. It's the same setlist they've been doing, and I was hoping they'd throw in something crazy like "Epilogue" or "Sylvia," but I wasn't surprised that they didn't. My favorite song from the new album was "Putting the Dog to Sleep," and I also loved hearing "No Widows." I got a setlist afterwards and overall I loved the concert.

The arrangements for some songs from Hospice are different from the studio versions, and in some cases that's a good thing, but in some cases I actually like the studio version better. For example, "Two" is my absolute favorite song by the band (and one of my overall favorite songs by anyone). But the live version felt a little bit too upbeat. Of course I still loved it, and it was the one song that I couldn't refrain myself from singing along with, but it just didn't pack the same punch as the album version. On the other hand, "Bear" and "Wake" were absolutely gorgeous live (and so was "Kettering"); the band managed to amplify the heartache in those songs.

I filmed the whole show, so here it is. You can watch the songs individually from my youtube playlist page or just click through them here using the arrows. You can also download great audio from nyctaper.com.