Photo by Alessio Michelini
The Antlers/Little Green Cars – The Academy, Dublin, 17/11/11
Some bands don’t put very much into their live performances. Sometimes, you go to see a band and it’s almost like you should have stayed home and listened to the CD instead: note-for-note reproductions of their studio recordings. No risks taken, no tweaks, no flourishes. Live performances like that don’t deserve so much as the time of day. At the other end of the scale, there are bands like The Antlers: once a Peter Silberman solo project, they are now a fully-fledged band who put so much into their albums that they have to bring along an extra guitarist (Timothy Mislock) to pull it off live.
The songs off 2009’s ‘Hospice’ sounded entirely different once the band got around to playing them live, and this inventive approach to live gigs has bled into the performance of material from their most recent album, ‘Burst Apart’. While not radically different, ‘Burst Apart’ takes on a personality all of its own in a live setting. Tonight, it is performed in its entirety, save for ‘Tiptoe’, which requires a working fireplace, of all things, to be accurately recreated live – they didn’t play it when the new record was premiered back in March, and, gorgeous as it may be, they’re not about to start now.
It says something about the group’s growing popularity in Ireland that they’re now playing the main room in The Academy; when they were last here in May 2010, they packed out the smaller, downstairs venue. One band who will have no trouble filling the main room here, once they get some proper momentum going, are local heroes Little Green Cars, who open proceedings perfectly with a powerful, atmospheric set. The band are driven by wonderful harmonies and soaring hooks, both of which are present in abundance on set-opener ‘The John Wayne’. Every one of these songs goes down a treat with the growing crowd, ‘My Love Took Me Down to the River (To Silence Me)’ being another highlight (featuring a rather Florence Welch-y vocal from Faye O’Rourke); and the newer material sprinkled throughout their performance displays a band with a bright future ahead of them. Their name might be like Marmite, but they have been making serious waves here this year, so if I were you, I would remember it and keep tabs on them.
I was speaking to someone a short while before doors opened, and he told me, when asked if this gig would sell out, that ‘it definitely wouldn’t’; but clearly he underestimated the interest Irish people have in The Antlers, because the room continues to fill up while the band prepare to take to the stage. (Silberman makes an early appearance as his guitar is tuned up.) By the time they eventually do so, at a perfectly punctual nine o’clock, elbow room is extremely limited – this is why I took up residence at the barrier particularly early on. In hindsight, it was little wonder the place filled up so quick, because they put on the most compelling and downright beautiful gig I’ve seen all year.
A brace of newer songs, ‘Parentheses’ and ‘No Widows’ get things off to a fantastic start, the former considerably beefed up by Michael Lerner’s assertive, trip-hop-inspired drumming and a raucous outro, and the latter slowed down slightly to emphasise its melancholic subject matter. It is juxtaposed with one of the most infectious hooks of the year, but the focus is clearly on its more cinematic qualities. Speaking of which, the first ‘Hospice’ song to turn up is ‘Kettering’ – no surprises there – but it’s a far more widescreen proposition in a live setting, its heartbreaking narrative taking on even greater resonance (and resulting in a few lumps in throats) as the song builds to a sweeping climax that is reminiscent of post-rock. ‘Rolled Together’ features a similarly explosive ending, which probably provokes an ‘is this really the same band?’ kind of reaction from the crowd – I can’t tell because we’re all collectively stunned into silence by it. Silberman has an incredible set of pipes on him, too: the notes he hits during its intro are met with considerable applause.
Moments like this are set against songs like the particularly intense ‘Atrophy’, which features a wig-out at the end: one that is the perfect release after its mournful verses, but is nonetheless relatively subdued. It’s the second of the ‘Hospice’ songs to be rolled out and is particularly intense, setting up a five-song run through most of the rest of ‘Burst Apart’. (‘French Exit’ shows up in between the older songs and is the perfect contrast to what it’s surrounded by.) This run is kicked off with an utterly glorious rendition of ‘Corsicana’, stripped back to its purest form and undoubtedly one of the highlights of the night. Coming out the other side of ‘Rolled Together’, ‘Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out’ (producing the first sing-along of the night) makes an appearance, before the main set is rounded off with rapturously-received versions of ‘Hounds’ and ‘Putting the Dog to Sleep’, the latter of which gets one of the best responses of the night.
By this point, the entire place is cheering and those on the balcony are on their feet, applauding the band to the rafters, and this doesn’t stop until the band re-emerge for ‘I Don’t Want Love’. The response this song gets leaves a clear impression on Silberman, who has remained silent most of the night, letting keyboard player Darby Cicci do the talking when needs be. He quips, “How the fuck did you guys sing along to my song? It’s really hard!” This reaction sends the crowd into overdrive – and that’s when Cicci drops a bombshell. “We weren’t sure if we’d have time to play this song, but we decided we would, before we came back out, because you guys have been awesome!” The feeling is definitely mutual. It has to be a ‘Hospice’ song… and we are rewarded with ‘Sylvia’, which goes down a storm, culminating in another one of those moments where the entire room is silenced (Silberman’s goosebump-inducing take on the song’s coda).
They’re not done yet, though. As the band say their goodbyes, we’re all aware that ‘Sylvia’ would have been a perfect way to finish the night. They’re preparing to play one last song, though, and a ringing G major chord results in some members of the crowd calling for ‘Bear’. What we get instead (and what I’ve been hoping to hear all night) is an absolutely stunning take on ‘Epilogue’. I’m not ashamed to say that it moved me to tears. The studio version is always enough to toy with my emotions, but seeing it live is something else. It’s as intense an experience for the crowd as it is for Silberman himself, and I briefly wonder, as I wait to leave, struggling to put my thoughts together after hearing it, how he manages to withstand putting himself through the shredder with that song. Its uplifting coda finishes the gig on the highest of high notes (and we’ve seen, not to mention heard, plenty of those), and I’m almost certain that, upon their return to these shores, whether it be next year or with a new album in two years or so, they’re going to need to get used to playing bigger venues – an 800-capacity venue simply does not do this band justice.
