[The New Classics is a reoccurring segment in which we examine our favorite indie releases that are bound to replace our parent’s “classic rock” stash hidden in the attic or the basement. These aren’t reviews, these are unedited testimonies and opinions about why we love what we love. Can we get a witness?]

Words by Pat Driscoll

Album: Hospice
Artist: The Antlers
Released: August 18, 2009
Label: Frenchkiss Records
Produced by: The Antlers

I’ve listened to The Antlers‘ third record, Hospice, quite a bit since its “official” release two and half years ago. I’ve thought about Hospice even more and I still don’t know exactly how I feel about it. Here’s what I think—I think Hospice is a brilliant record. I think it’s as raw and honest a record I’ve ever heard, even if I’m still not so sure exactly what it’s about. To take it a step further, I think it’s a mystery, not only to me, but to anyone familiar with it. No matter how sure you are as to what Peter Silberman meant when he wrote Hospice, allow me to assure you, you’re probably wrong. But, ultimately, that’s not the point, is it?

The Antlers / Kettering
The Antlers / Two

I think Hospice is a masterpiece. I think Hospice is a beautiful record. It’s beautiful in its agony and its hope. It’s beautiful in its execution and in its nuance. It’s beautiful in its words and its scope. Hospice is also, however, a tough record to love or even like, but I don’t think it was ever intended to be any other way (if it was “intended” to be anything at all). What I mean is Hospice is a sad record, man. You wouldn’t listen to it while casually cleaning the house or while cooking dinner or on a road trip. It’s meant to be devoted to. It’s meant to be pored over. It’s meant to affect you on a gut level. It is, truly, a piece of art and not in a pretentious way, either, but rather in a very pure and very earnest way. It exceeds greatness at almost every turn.

Like all great art, Hospice has elicited many, many different interpretations over its lifespan and like many a great artist, head Antler Peter Silberman has refused to divulge exactly what his record is supposed to be “about.” He’d prefer to leave it a mystery. Some think it’s the tale of a hospice nurse who falls in love with a cancer-riddled patient under his watch, only to watch her slip away right before his eyes. Others think the cancer is meant to be a metaphor for an abusive and subsequently failed relationship that the record’s author lived through. I’ve heard people adamantly argue that it’s about a man watching helplessly as his daughter dies of cancer. I’m of the opinion that every single one of those interpretations is correct because as I said earlier, it’s not really the point. The point is to find something to be moved by and interpret it how you see fit.

As a piece of music, Hospice is breathtaking. The instrumental “Prologue,” which opens with the sound of labored, but steady breathing, jut drops you right into the grey, while the opening line of the record, from “Kettering”, “I wish that I had known in / That first minute we met / The unpayable debt / That I owed you” lets you know that while it may be great, Hospice probably won’t be a whole lot of fun. By the time we hear the same breath on the record’s penultimate track, “Wake” it has changed from steady to gasping as the breather—a beloved patient, a metaphoric relationship, a child—passes away. It’s truly harrowing.

Now, I’m not smart enough to say definitively what Hospice is about. Maybe someone is, but it’s not me. What I can say definitively, however, is that there is a theme of loss throughout and I can tell you precisely when Hospice became more than a record for me. August 18th, 2010. On that date, I lost my father to cancer. He was 59 years old. I’m still angry. I’m still sad. I’m still searching for answers and I know I won’t ever get them. Whatever or whoever Silberman lost prior to writing Hospice isn’t really relevant. What is relevant is that it wrecked him. So he wrote. He created. On Hospice he sounds like I felt for that last month. I get it. You want to scream. You want to cry. You want to laugh. You want to feel. But it’s impossible. There’s a numbness that overcomes you and that’s why, when it was over, Silberman had to make this record. His passion is evident and the sadness is palpable. Hospice is naked and it’s the kind of record that forces you to feel every moment. It’s a brave recording.

I find it easy to draw parallels to my experience while listening to Hospice which is why it’s become a somewhat difficult record for me to hear. I just relate to it so much – especially the early tracks, as well as “Wake” and “Epilogue.” The writing is so vivid and the changes in tone are so legitimate -that fury in “Sylvia,” his whispered delivery during “Two”- that, truthfully, for me it’s scary. It’s like I’m right back there during the worst time of my life. So why do I keep returning to it if I find it so harrowing? In a way, it’s cathartic. It’s the kind of record that makes you feel as though there’s someone out there who might get it -even if, as I stated earlier, he could be singing about something completely different. I don’t know, really. I guess it’s a quiet way to deal.

Hospice is a very personal record for me. It’s seen me through a dark time and beyond, but it is also inherently universal. Everybody has been through something harrowing in their life and sometimes you just need a record to say for you what you’re unable to. That’s Hospice for me and, I’m sure, for a great number of it’s fans. It has been both a burden and a blessing and if that’s not great art, I don’t know what is.

Filed under: New Classics, Not Blake, Jim, or Brendan