TAS in Session: The Antlers

Thanks to the success of their critically-acclaimed, deeply moving debut album Hospice, Brooklyn trio The Antlers have been spending more time on the road than at home. They'll open for The National this summer - including a special show at Radio City Music Hall - and they'll also embark on their own headlining U.S. tour with Phantogram beginning April 8 in Stony Brook, NY. Recently, the guys were in New York just long enough to come up to the Bronx for a special TAS session with Alisa Ali.

The latest album from The Antlers is called Hospice: it's a concept album about a guy who works in a hospice and falls in love with a cancer patient who eventually dies. Pretty heavy stuff. Based on that, I wasn't really sure what to expect when the guys - singer and guitarist Peter Silberman, drummer Michael Lerner and multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci - came in to our studios. I thought maybe they'd be really soft- spoken and sad. But you know what? Nothing could have been further from the truth. They were actually really funny and personable guys and we got along swimmingly.

A friend of mine helped me gain perspective on the album when she told me that she didn't think it was sad at all. I guess if you just listen to the music and don't read too much into the lyrics, it really isn't. In fact I found the release to be kind of hopeful and resilient. I think you get that from the live performances too.

Alisa: I read that this album was made as an "elegy for your planned disappearance." You said that ....

Peter Silberman: I don't remember saying that. The funny thing is, that doesn't make any sense. I don't remember saying that, I don't know how it traveled around so much.

Alisa: Is that quote haunting you?

Peter: It kind of is! Especially since I don't get it. I don't understand what it means. Really, it's a record about a dysfunctional relationship and the nature of those kind of relationships are that people become closed off from the people they know outside of it. And I think somehow I might have just said that in the course of saying some sentence that really didn't make sense. Kind of rambling, like I'm doing now.

Alisa: Where were you living before you moved to Brooklyn?

Peter: I was living in Manhattan. I grew up upstate. Somers. Not that far upstate. Northern Westchester. That's another part of that that's gotten really misconstrued, that I went into a cabin in the woods and made an album. That didn't happen. It's more a misconception of what the record's about.

Alisa: So there was no period of isolation and you weren't a recluse at any point?

Peter: No, it's referring to the story of the record, the being cut off from people, but it's not like hiding in the bedroom by yourself. It's like you and another person. You don't go out anymore. It's that.

Alisa: I'm glad you cleared that up ... [that you weren't] a recluse for the two years you were making this album.

Peter: I think that would have been hard to do considering that there's a whole band playing on it. At no point was it a cave recording. It wasn't isolated.

Darby Cicci: We were already a band back then. It's not as depressing as it sounds.

Alisa: The overall concept of the record does deal with some tough issues.

Peter: It does, but I didn't want to make an album that was depressing. It digs into a low place but it pulls itself out of it and that's sort of the intent of the record.

Alisa: I feel awkward, even, about asking you about it? Do you feel, like, 'oh god, I have to talk about these songs ....'

Peter: It's so long ago as to what the record is about and when it was made. It feels old to me. Not in a bad way, but it's a younger version of myself. Especially the more momentum the album's gained and the audience it's gained, it doesn't feel like mine anymore. I'm happy about that. The people who know the record; I feel like it belongs to them now. They can decide whatever they want it to be about. And it's not about me anymore and that's good. That's what I wanted in the first place.

Alisa: So you have a bit of detachment?

Peter: It's weird, I think it's more of a connection to the people listening to them than the songs themselves for me. I think that's the reason I'm still able to care about it is because other people seem to. I may, in my life, be moving on from it but I'm not moving on from the people who care about it.

Alisa: What if had been a flop and nobody had cared about it?

Peter: That's a good question. I don't know. I sort of felt with this record if it didn't go anywhere, I was probably done. I'd recorded a lot of albums before this and playing in bands since I was younger. It wasn't a last ditch effort, like desperate kind of thing, it was like I don't really have it in me to do another one of these unless things were going to move forward and this one was also super intensive [in the] making of it. I think I would have come around eventually. I remember at the time [thinking] if this album doesn't go anywhere, I'm going to have to seriously ....

Alisa: Go into dentistry?

Peter: (laughs): Go back into isolation.

Alisa: The sequencing on this album, was it a lot easier ... because it's a sort of a concept album?

Peter: Yeah, the album follows a story so it was deciding what each song was going to be about before it sounded like anything and then fitting those lyrical ideas into the other stuff that was being worked on, in no particular order. It just so happened that those song lined up well for a tracklisting. The "Epilogue" was actually the last song written and that's where the rest of the album came from. Storyline-wise it's after everything has occurred. Sort of a closing thought, like Jerry Springer used to have ... I've always liked sequencing tracks, figuring out where songs belong. It makes the songs around it sound different. Even now we're changing the order seeing how different songs sound next to each other.

Alisa: What's next for you guys?

Michael: When we're home we're trying to get some time in the studio to record. We're getting some new ideas and we're excited about a new release, but that's not going to be for a while yet. We still have plenty of shows coming up that takes us out of Brooklyn and keeps us away through the summer at least.

Alisa: So you've got big ideas for a new record?

Peter: Yeah, huge (laughs).

Michael Lerner: No, we're excited. It's the first time the three of us got together to write and record in this way and it's cool. Being on the road you get a lot of ideas in your head that we're finally able to flesh out and have some fun in the studio.

Peter: We work on some of it when we're gone. Our studio, we can make it portable when we have to which isn't often but we try to make the time.

Alisa: What do you find inspirational about being on the road?

Peter: Constantly being in new places. Losing all sense of familiarity with the world. (laughs).

Alisa: [Is "Sylvia"] A nod to Sylvia Plath?

Peter: A little bit. An amalgamation of different people and characters and she is among them.