The Antlers, The Magic Stick, Detroit, MI

The Magic Stick is a particularly intriguing venue. Downstairs is a bowling alley and café-bar that looks as if it hasn’t been remodeled since the fifties, upstairs is the type of sprawling and endearingly shabby venue that creates the kind of intimate concert-going experience that is becoming dangerously obsolete as more and more places plant partitions between band and audience.

Antlers’ previous tour of ‘Hospice’, a widely acclaimed album following the painfully slow deterioration of a man’s relationship with a patient in a cancer ward, was a rewarding live experience. The emotional landscape explored on that album was even more poignant live, as the band delicately built up or stripped down the album versions of songs. Their recently released follow-up, ‘Burst Apart’, is a completely different work. The songs continue to explore the imperfections of human nature and the fragility of human relationships, but in different settings and to a different musical approach more susceptible to biting electric guitars or floating ambient sound-scapes for Silberman’s vocals to drift over.

At the Magic Stick, the Antlers work through almost the entirety of their new album. Unlike the songs of ‘Hospice’, the arrangements remain quite close to their recorded counterparts, yet many of the songs take on a new life. Keyboardist Darby Cicci works multiple keyboards, effects, and an electronic bass foot pedal, while Silberman and touring guitarist Timothy Mislock both have impressively large pedal boards. They open with ‘Parentheses’, Cicci and drummer Michael Lerner creating an intricacy on the verse that compliments Silberman’s falsetto and is juxtaposed by the harsh outbreak of electric guitars on the chorus. The outburst of sound that climaxes ‘Rolled Together’ is elongated as the band showcase their ability to lock in with one another and create the characteristic wash of emotionally charged sound that marks them as incredibly talented musicians. They end the first set with ‘Putting the Dog to Sleep’, which begins with Sliberman’s cry, “Don’t lie to me, I’m not going to die alone.” The sparse guitar hits and Lerner’s steady colorful pulse evolves into a prolonged full-band jam that confounds the audience and rings above them as they cheer for the encore.

Yet the songs on which the band really excel are the select few they play from ‘Hospice’. When Silberman switches to his falsetto as he repeats the chorus of ‘Bear’, which recreates the argument between a young couple – “‘Just too old’, ‘We’re not old at all,’“ – the impact of the song intensifies. The live version of ‘Two’ contains a certain delicacy created the fragility of Silberman’s voice, the absence of a continual guitar riff, and introductory three-part harmonies. The show ends with ‘Wake’, a haunting song about the closing off and difficult emergence that follows the loss of a loved one. As the band slowly build up behind the vocal refrain “don’t ever let anyone tell you you deserve that,” the vibe shifts from mourning to a kind of morbid celebration of perseverance that induce some audience members to tears. And as they leave the stage, the impact of the last song is still lingering in the musty Detroit air – this is no ordinary band.