The Antlers - Hospice

Be careful with Hospice, because it could very well ruin your day. Self-released by Antlers frontman Peter Silberman in March, it is the most profoundly sad album of the year.  It’s also the best, an incredibly evocative narrative of guilt, loss and most importantly redemption. 

Based on a fragile and stormy relationship with a terminally ill cancer patient, Hospice alternates between its narrator’s nightmares and his equally hellish reality. Grounded in electronic ambience and metallic guitar tones, the album is driven by Silberman’s frail tenor; it’s the ideal instrument for this story, capable of conveying both the tainted optimism of “Bear” and the desperation of “Sylvia” in equal measure.

Making an album about terminal cancer is an inherently risky proposition because there’s so much room for triteness and superficiality. The miracle of Hospice is the tightrope act it performs in avoiding both. Silberman establishes a compelling dramatic arc in the album’s first half, but it’s not until “Two,” the jangling emotional climax, that the tragedy fully materializes. Nothing since Arcade Fire’s Funeral has been as thematically engaging, but even that feels impersonal and unfocused by comparison. Hospice is a difficult and uncompromising work of art, and all the more rewarding for it.