The Antlers – Screen on the Green, London 24/08/2011

26 August 2011, 15:04 | Written by Jenny Stevens

(Live)

“Err, could you guys, like, stand up and come forward. It’s kinda uncomfortable having you all sat down,” The Antlers tell us, looking out at the horizontal audience, nested cosily in the Screen on the Green’s squishy cinema seats.

What was set to be the most comfortable gig of the year – an after-hours late-night showcase of the Brooklyn trio’s spellbinding latest Burst Apart – is now an awkward stumble over rowed seating, sofas and popcorn debris for the makeshift stage at the front of the north London cinema.

Snuggling up close to my favourite band wouldn’t normally invoke a sense of unease, but with The Antlers, I’ll forgive myself for being tentative. Burst Apart may not have the same heartstring-yanking poignancy as 2009’s Hospice – a bruising narrative of a failing relationship told through the metaphorical prism of terminal illness – but it’s still emotionally dense. From opener ‘I Don’t Want Love’, songsmith Peter Silberman’s Sparklehorse-like ability to luster his tales of despair and loathing into a stream of consonant beauty is all the more poignant when you can see the whites of his eyes.

It’s a relief then when ‘French Exit’ kicks in, marking the lighter elements of Burst Apart. We bop along to it’s tickling synths, which gloss over lyrics such as “don’t bother trying to fix my heart” before moving into ‘Parentheses’’ prickly piano intro. It’s a shame that any rocking out to its jarring guitars are physically pretty inhibited on such a narrow stage, but it’s nonetheless a highlight of the gig.

A drumkit problem leading into ‘No Widows’ gives an unexpected, but welcome deviation from the album showcase. As drummer Michael Lerner and keyboardist Darby Cicci attend to the problem, Silberman rocks backwards and forwards, his shadow magnified on the cinema screed amidst enlarged tangles of and stacked amplifiers like a shadow puppet. There’s no fuss, no stress, he just serenely jams out wafting circles of reverbed guitar, drifting into a stripped down rendition of Hospital’s ‘Bear’ before being joined by the rest of the band.

The slight deviation builds an even greater anticipation for ‘No Widows’, a velvet blanket of scattered synths and dizzy choir boy “oos” which is even more sumptuous up close than on record. Working through the latter half of Burst Apart, a giddy crescendo builds for final track ‘Putting the Dog to Sleep’, the most stinging of all tonight’s tear-jerkers with it’s plea “prove to me I’m not gonna die alone”. This should have been the closer, but a rapturous applause gives way for Hospice’s ‘Shiva’, which although brilliant, leaves a slightly warmer taste in the mouth than the cold desperation of ‘Putting the Dog to Sleep’. But maybe that was the idea.

Anyone who saw The Antlers at the Green Man Festival on Sunday will recongise tonight as an entirely different affair – and not just because the tiny venue, which sold out in a millisecond, was packed with a loyal band of fans (including the xx’s Oliver Sim, incidentally). In a heaving tent, Silberman’s eddying falsetto harmonies and whomping guitar washed over us in warm waves, tonight it engulfs us. Either way, it’s wonderful, and while Burst Apart lacks the bloody innards of Hospice, tonight proved that it’s still a thing of sparkling, gut-wrenching beauty.