Grade: 91% (A-)
"Music that keeps moving and is kind of entrancing and expansive at the same time. Headphone music, music that keeps you going while you're driving for 20 hours."
That is the way that the Antlers frontman Peter Silberman describes their newest record Burst Apart. That description is about as good as it gets and this review is therefore essentially worthless. But I'll trudge on anyways. Burst Apart was recorded after the trio's expansive tour in support of 2009's Hospice and the sound of the record was greatly shaped by their travels on the road. With the new incorporation of synths, the record holds a quirky ability to be all over the place rhythmically, yet maintain a steady pace throughout without leaving the listener's head spinning.
The newly added synths do not take the front seat and nor do they take the rear. In fact, no instrument truly leads the effort on this record. It is as much of a cohesive effort that I have heard this year. The instruments work off of each other in a way to let the vocals ascend and float merely inches above the rest. This might also be the most emotional album of this year as well. There are moments of darkness and moments of light. Some songs could be used in The Dark Night Rises and some could be used in The Notebook.
Multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci has said that he thinks people will be, "sucked in… to the world of the record." That is exactly what Burst Apart does. It doesn't bounce around in your mind, it instead reverberates throughout it, touching every sense. Credit Silberman's vocal talents for most of this. On "No Windows," he uses his voice as an instrument, like a synth in itself, setting the mood for the song with his murmurs.
Again, this record is still the strongest cohesive effort I've heard in a while. It was in fact recorded and produced by only the three of them. Michael Lerner's drums toy with your sense of the album's early rhythms on "Parentheses," and the guitar guides the albums top track "Rolled Together" while being sheltered throughout by synth work. There is an atmosphere preserved throughout the record while it still remains direct and palpable for the casual listener.
Lyrics help with that. While Silberman is emotionally deep and deceptively simple on "Rolled Together," he sings, "so if i see you again, desperate and stoned," on opener "I Don't Want Love." But that doesn't mean the song has no depth. In fact, he uses that amusing line to reassert the overall sexual connotations of the song as a whole. This type of lyrical flair is found throughout the record.
These concepts range on the album. In fact, countless subjects are breached over the ten songs all while it continues a togetherness. This can be related back to the inspiration of the record as a whole. While spirited by the life on the road, the trio still experienced all of those things together. Whether it would be sleeping in a tiny van in the freezing night or playing a bad show in a town they'd never heard of. They experienced all of that together as a group. That's the feeling you get from this album: an illusive togetherness, and maybe that's where their EP entitled (together) came from. Or maybe not. I might be the only one who cares.
