SOUNDTRACK: THE ANTLERS- Tiny Desk Concert #51 (March 15, 2010).
The Antlers is one of those bands that is critically lauded and whom many people really like but whom I just can’t get into. (I always think I do, but I believe it’s because I’m thinking of other similarly named bands, because when I listen to a Antlers song, I immediately think, oh it’s that band.)
The band, to be blunt, sings really depressing songs. (Their then new album was called Hospice, for god’s sake). And that’s just not my thing. The music is beautiful, it’s just not for me.
The songs (elegies to a dying friend full of grief and longing) are quite lovely and singer Peter Silberman has a pretty amazing falsetto and the songs feel so fragile that they may fall apart at any minute (and they nearly do a few times at the Tiny Desk).
They play three songs: “Bear,” “Atrophy,” and “Sylvia.” It’s just three of them. Silberman on super quiet atmospheric guitar and Michael Lerner and Darby Cicci on drums and keys (not sure who is who). The drums are simply a snare and a shaker. And the keyboard is one of those hilariously tiny Korg two octave jobs that is basically like a laptop (I love that he can make so many different sounds with that).
This Tiny Desk is very nice. The songs are really pretty (I like “Bear” especially with the lyric: “All the while I’ll know we’re fucked and not getting unfucked soon”). “Atrophy” is similarly fragile with keening falsettos and lyrics like “I’d happily take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself.” When Silberman starts actually playing the guitar at the end the sound is nearly broken. The final song “Sylvia” is also delicate. Although the drum is played with mallets (and is rather martial) the song is not any louder. Indeed, with lyrics like, “Sylvia, get your head out of the oven. Go back to screaming, and cursing, remind me again how everyone betrayed you,” it’s not going to get too crazy.
The band doesn’t talk to the audience. They play their three songs, seemingly wrapped in a cocoon of their own making. It’s really quite lovely, just something I wouldn’t want to get involved in too often.
In the notes, it says that the band can really rock out live. These songs are pretty mellow, so I can’t exactly imagine them rocking out, but I’d be curious to hear what they do as a rocking band. And, I will admit that after listening to the show twice, I did start to like it a lot more. I’m just not sure I need more music that’s going to make me cry.
[READ: May 10, 2015] “The Apologizer”
I’m not sure why I surprised to see Kundera in the New Yorker. I guess I don’t think of him as writing much anymore (based on utterly nothing, although I see that his last novel was in 1999) or maybe of not writing short stories (he has but one collection). So it was a surprise for me to see his name here.
Regardless, I really enjoyed the way this story was set up. There were many different small sections that seemed unrelated but then united in a rather unusual way.
The first section: “Alain Meditates on the Navel” was wonderful itself. Alain notices how all the young girls walk around with their navels showing and he wonders about the seductiveness of the navel. He compares the navel to the thighs as a center of desire (long thighs indicate the long road towards pleasure) or the buttocks (signifying brutality, the shortest road to the goal) or breasts (the center of female seductive power). But what of the navel?
Then he reflects back on the last time he saw his mother. He was ten years old, she touched his navel, maybe gave him a kiss and was gone. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 