The Antlers - Hospice [Album]

Jonny Abrams

March 26, 2009, 05:12 PM

Views: 1836   Comments: 2

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It seems that a robot, not unlike the one in Hitchhiker’s Guide which calculates the meaning of life, has been programmed to process dualities of human emotion – such as hope and despair – and replicate it as music. Well, now we have the equation:

Big, pounding drums +
even bigger, reverb-soaked production +
driving, monosyllabic bass lines +
echo-y feedback +
a delicate, tender male vocal +
a quiet/loud dynamic =

Music that is, like, so emotional and otherworldly, y’know?

Well, not quite. Our robot friend has made a bloody good fist of it in churning out Hospice by The Antlers, but it’s not quite there. That’s what makes it a robot. Only living, breathing beings can make imperfections sound perfect. Sure, it sounds epic and uplifting in a monged sort of way, with sounds that wash over you and soothe you and all of that fun stuff, but it sounds too much like the product of an equation that’s all too easy to fall back on. In essence, it’s the kind of music they’d play during a sad scene on Scrubs, gently infused with credibility-ensuring ‘atmospherics’. Childlike music box effects set against troubled, hymnal backdrops – that sort of thing.

While it flows nicely as an album, there’s not much in it to distinguish one track from the next. There’s a slow-burning dynamic reminiscent of Spirit of Eden-era Talk Talk, but little of the colour and invention. There’s a Sparklehorse-like fragility, but not as much range and skill in terms of songwriting. It’s the kind of stuff that Sigur Ros could (and perhaps do) fart out in their sleep.

Typically, The Antlers have been greeted with almost universal critical acclaim. Which is puzzling as, for all the artifice of beauty that Hospice manages to conjure, it all feels so gosh darn predictable.

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