Gabble Ratchet
Senior Member
Hospice is the third album from American independent band The Antlers. It's a concept album, and the story is about a man who falls in love with a depressed and abusive cancer patient at the hospital he works in. The patient ends up dying beside him, and he is stricken with grief and regret.
The music itself is a beautiful melancholy, packed with raw emotion and sorrow. The main features are the powerful use of piano, Peter Silberman's beautiful voice and the band's soft instrumentation. Hospice is the most emotional album I've ever listened to, and is quickly becoming one of my all time favourites.
I'll be reviewing it track by track, as I listen to it.
1. Prologue - And it starts with a haunting piano, and horror movie-ish background noise. Ghostlike whistling leads into the next track.
2. Kettering (Named after the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre) - The background noise is gone, and there is only piano, such solemn, heartwrenching piano, and a soft high voice. All the emotion is spilled out in a solemn minimalistic style, which makes it the only piece of music I've ever listened to that brings me to tears. The drums and guitar come in, but the piano is still at the forefront, preaching that sad sad message. And the song finishes with a lone whispering voice, howling silently into the night.
3. Sylvia - Starting with distorted bleeping background noise, the vocals are as emotional as the previous track, until the introduction of guitar. Everything bursts into life, it briefly turns into a rock song with melody for the chorus then back again to a slowly building verse, before another chorus. It finishes with soft acoustic guitar and an even softer voice.
4. Atrophy - More piano/vocal introduces this song, and slowly, gradually builds up, with a few lightly tapped cymbals adding to the tension. Helicopter blades and bells are introduced before ending with an acoustic/vocal verse.
5. Bear - Piano/vocal theme again, it's incredible how such a simple method can produce such an effect on me, I guess it's just one of the wonders of music. Anyway the acoustic guitars come in briefly and the vocals pick up, constantly changing the song's tempo and structure, swinging back and forth from minimal emotion and melodic rock, similar to Sylvia.
6. Thirteen - Merging seamlessly from the end of Bear, Thirteen starts with an echoing, ambient sound and moves into an undescribable and grand piece of music.It ends with a high, long drawn voice and slow paced piano
7. Two - Starts with an acoustic/vocal arrangement again, but a more delicate sound, that is until the electric instruments come in. The voice picks up too, with a hint of anger and a few cusses accentuating that. And so it continues through the rest of the song, making this one of the more upbeat songs on the album.
8. Shiva - Shiva starts with piano, but quickly moves to acoustics and has a warmer feel than the previous songs. A glimmer of hope, even. There's even some brass in the background, and it finishes as it started with piano and acoustic guitar.
9. Wake - Distortion and a solemn howling set the tone back for the penultimate track, and the first few verses are sad ones. The soft thud of a bass drum starts a slow buildup, the howling all the while casting a bleak yet beautiful portrait. An intermission of piano leads into another verse, and the music builds up, and builds up, and builds up into a chorus of anguish, raw emotion and power. The sound is massive, absolutely massive in scale, and it is a grand force, before it slowly fades into silence.
10. Epilogue - An acoustic/vocal only reprise of Kettering, which ends in a simply haunting distorted piano riff.
