The Antlers - The Ritz, Manchester 31/10/14

09 November 2014, 13:30 | Written by Joe Goggins

(Live)

(The Antlers)

I’m not a booking agent, so I’m not privy to the ins and outs of venue selection, but tonight’s selection of The Ritz as the setting for The Antlers’ first Manchester show in nearly three years is both pleasing - it’s an old ballroom with plenty of character - and baffling, given that they played across the road in a room about a third of the size last time and didn’t even fill that, and there’s been no appreciable boost to their profile since then; the brilliant Familiars, released in June, seems to have flown under many a radar.

Sure enough, they arrive on stage - indecently early, owing to the club night they need to finish in time for - to a venue about half full; the balcony’s been closed. There’s no similar suggestion of half measures from the band themselves, though, who have made arrangements to ensure that Familiars can be done justice live. The album’s scored through with brass work - horns and trumpets, chiefly - so Kelly Pratt, who’s worked with Arcade Fire and Beirut in the past, has been drafted into the live lineup. It’s a good job, too, because tonight’s setlist leans heavily on the trio’s newest release; they open with the gorgeous “Palace”, which begins dreamily before forceful trumpets and a greater urgency in frontman Peter Silberman’s delivery signal a dramatic landscape change.

What I love about Familiars - and what’s perhaps put others off - is the way the whole thing runs like a mood piece, the tracks melting into each other in gloriously lackadaisical fashion. The challenge onstage, then, is to make sure that the setlist runs neatly whilst separating those songs from one another. That perhaps explains why tracks from the band’s last album, Burst Apart, are sadly scarce; that album’s diversity would probably mean that too many tracks from it would jar when set against Familiars material. We do get a handful of quick blasts - “I Don’t Want Love”, “No Widows” and the aching melancholy of “Putting the Dog to Sleep” - but otherwise, Familiars is the focal point, and it’s largely translates successfully; the blend of the wandering “Director” and the steadily epic “Revisited’ mid-set is a real highlight, and only the meandering “Doppelganger” drags, although Silberman’s ability to bring his totally different vocal approach on that song to the stage should be commended.

On record and in critical terms, there’s no question that The Antlers now occupy a position on the top tier of indie rock; in terms of quality, if not stature, they sit alongside bands like The National. Quite why they aren’t playing bigger shows, at this point, remains mystifying, but you suspect that they’d always be able to make their shows feel intimate, anyway; whether we’ll ever get to test that theory, of course, remains to be seen.