A languidly drifting guitar cresting along backed by a sleepy drum and regal trumpet open the Antlers latest material, Undersea Ep. Track 1, “Drift Dive” sees singer Pete Silberman imagining a world completely flooded “The planet drowns in a hundred days, dissolving into a million pieces in a billion places.” In his sublime falsetto he sets the tone for an EP that shares some of The Antlers most poignant and heartfelt songs. On debut album Hospice the album focused on the suffering endured by both parties when a loved one contracts cancer, and the stricken helplessness that the healthy person suffers. The intense lyrics coupled with the brooding but often frenetic instrumentation produced a brutal and vivid picture. Sophomore effort released last year, Burst Apart, cut back on the ambitious eight minute tracks of the previous album and brightened the overall tone of the album, but maintained the gut-wrenching effects.
On Undersea the band strikes out with
relatively uplifting tunes. Endless Ladder clocks in at
eight and a half minutes, allowing a twinkling piano melody to buoy
Silberman crooning repeatedly “Climbing higher, Climbing higher, On an endless
ladder climbing higher” as his voice strains toward unknown reaches he knows he’ll
never get to. While the theme might be similar
to previous Antlers songs, the atmosphere of the track does not indicate forlorn
and disparaged resignation, but instead a contented submission to the task.
The final
two tracks, “Crest” and “Zelda,” continue the exploration of deep soul music
that they so successfully found on the scintillating Burst Apart closer “Putting the Dog to Sleep.” Using solemn, muted
trumpets and a glacial cadence “Zelda” gently slides through cosmic sounds as the
aquatic theme crops up again “Zelda, it’s just not important, the small things
we suffer, they’re infistesimal, it’s in an ocean, that swims between us.” The
Antlers sound relaxed for the first time, trading the urgency of their prior
work for a melancholy acceptance of their still hopeless plights.
