port st. willow,
rochester,
the antlers,
tom,
water street music hall
—
Wednesday night one of my favorite groups in the last few years, The Antlers, came to Water Street Music Hall in Rochester and played a fantastic show. The Brooklyn trio, playing as a quartet, released one hell of an album in Burst Apart in early 2011 and an EP earlier this year entitled Undersea, both met with high acclaim. It was nice to see them back in Upstate NY since they last played The Ninth Ward here in Buffalo back in 2009.
Opening were Port St. Willow, also from Brooklyn and friends of Antlers frontman Pete Silberman. They play in a similar strand as The Antlers with lush, expansive hooks and melodies, except with slightly deeper focus on intrumentation and sonic qualities as opposed to a focus on lyrics and storytelling like we saw in The Antler’s debut Hospice. All the same, this was the perfect group to open for The Antlers. With washes of clacking percussion and vocal feedback, their mystical sound coated the little music hall and it was really stunning.
Soon after, The Antlers came out and we waded in “Drift Dive” which is the opening track off their gorgeous new EP. With flashes of guitar and horns amid languid samples, “Drift Dive” is a gorgeous track that eases you into it’s aquatic bliss. Silberman’s vocals are just as captivating live as they are in the studio, if not more emotionally cutting. They transitioned into “Rolled Together” a robust track off Burst Apart, which also does it’s work by painstakingly increasing it’s instrumentation and volume until snare and ride split the track wide open and Silberman and his lead guitarist fully rocked-out.
They did their fans well in splitting up their new material with a lot of the old as well. They played the entire Undersea EP in stunning fashion and also chose many songs from Hospice including “Kettering,” “Silvia,” and “Shiva.” Not to mention playing an awesome rendition of The Mountain Goats’ “No Children” which was a welcomed surprise.
As they left the stage, obviously everyone in the venue went insane and they came out to play the best encore I’ve seen all year. First they gave us “Zelda,” a favorite from the latest EP. The track is sprawled out and so much more stunning live. The effervescent harmonies toward the end of the track were just as easily rendered on stage as they were on the record. Next they went into “Putting the Dog to Sleep,” the closing track off Burst Apart and one of The Antler’s most arresting tracks as it compares euthanizing a pet to a dissolving relationship. Everyone was pretty cool with this as their final song, but as they morphed the outro into “Wake” that’s when everyone lost it. The emotionally-wrapped song that closed Hopsice filled the room as Silbrman’s voice barely held its ground as he sang “Don’t ever let anyone tell you you deserved that.”
No 'Bear' or 'Two,' and Peter never (disappointingly) plays anything live from 'In the Attic of the Universe,' but you're right Tom that 'Putting the Dog to Sleep / Wake' encore melody was a great ending to a great show!
Yeah I was hoping for "Two" and "French Exit" as well.