The Antlers - Hospice

Put this in a box with Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, maybe your Grizzly Bear. These slow, contemplative, pulsing, ambient, echoing tracks are made for rainy days and dark nights of the soul. Haunting vibrato, long fermatas - there is some clear reference to Radiohead in here as songs bounce from soft and brooding to hard and fast. Let's be clear - this album is not named Hospice by accident. Songs are about illness, death, not exactly happy topics, and the music matches the prevailing sentiment. That said, it's extremely provocative emotionally and musically - you occasionally hear those albums that physically tug on your heart strings and this one definitely slips right into that arsenal. They remind me a lot of Broken Social Scene in the best possible way - big full sounds, evocative lyrics, you can hear the heart in the record.

LISTEN