The Antlers at Kings Barcade Recap and Photo Gallery

September, 27, 2011 , by Whitney Ayres Kenerly

Scroll to the bottom of the article for the full photo gallery from the show.

The Antlers are some mellow bros. On their last stop touring for this year’s critically acclaimed album, Burst Apart, the boys played to a young crowd at King’s while the rally of middle aged motorcycle enthusiasts partied on the downtown streets below.

Opening band and fellow Brooklynites, Yellow Ostrich, have garnered some buzz for their infectious single “WHALE” and youthful indie exuberance. The lead singer looked fresh and cheery with a sort of naivety that added to the vulnerability of his sometimes-whiny vocals, while the drummer rolled out waves of percussion like semi-legal fireworks. The hi-hat cymbal was covered in an array of bronze, silver, and gold colored rose-like bells that flopped and jingled like a holiday muppet.

While, Yellow Osrtich specialize in super feel-good pop, The Antlers inhabit a somewhat grittier soundscape. It seemed appropriate that Portishead’s Dummy played in between the sets – transitioning into the smoke filled fantasy world evoked by trip-hop.

There is a lot of that film noir energy in Burst Apart, and when I spoke with lead singer, Peter Silberman, he mentioned that he had returned to listening to his collection of old Massive Attack records when making the album. No song on the album is more evident of that dark and sultry influence than set opener, “Parentheses”, with Silberman’s vocals swelling and hovering over the grimy guitar riffs and bellowing synth in a haunting manner that would make Beth Gibbons proud.

The buried well of sensual energy was the show was there, but subdued, almost even repressed. Some people cite The Antlers as their favorite music for making out (something that the young couple standing right in front of me did throughout the entire show) but it’s the kind of making out you would do in a [insert drug of choice here] filled haze. There was some guitar humping, but it was gently lackadaisical. With colorful bicep and chest tattoos, and v-neck tees in the various bluish greenish grays of the Hudson River, these guys are clearly accustomed to late nights roaming the dive bars and coffee shops of Williamsburg.

A highlight of the show was the band’s performance of “Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out” which begins like a sort of seafarer’s ghostly nursery rhyme with Silberman’s frustrated whimpers building, along with some folk-inspired guitar plucking, before falling into grinding and crashing riffs and like a ship being rocked about in a cove. I never realized before how much the mood of this song resembles a more aggressively realized and jammy version of my favorite The Cure hit, “Lullaby”.

The show and all it’s goth-hop influences mostly sounded a lot like the record – which is a good thing – with Silberman’s pretty vocals ballooning into the space through the seductively throbbing of the music. But while the album sometimes evokes the feeling of being unhinged and on the brink of self-inflicted madness, the casual demeanor of the band suggests that they have since unwound quite a bit on this tour.