Hear Me Out: The Antlers, "Palace"

By Courtesy The Antlers

The Antlers have carefully built their home in dimly lit hospital rooms and recovery wards, piecing together whispered stories of love and abuse, denial and revelation, and forgiveness and regret, most notably with the visceral narrative of “Hospice” in 2009 and the desperate attempted recovery in 2011’s “Burst Apart.” The question now facing the New York band is what to construct next, after the hospital beds have been put away and the bodies laid to rest.

“Palace,” the band’s first single off their upcoming release “Familiars,” is a bit of an uncertain answer, but it’s in that fragile self-doubt that the track finds beauty. Eerie echoing effects like those off “Hospice” appear on the track, but so do the mournful horns that characterized The Antlers’s most recent EP, “Undersea.” Those elements combine to soothe rather than sear like they have before, and the simple and haunting piano hook that weaves in and out of the track could be straight out of a Hisaishi score and lends “Palace” the serenity of a lullaby.

It’s no children’s lullaby, though, as Peter Silberman croons, “I swear I’ll find your light in the middle / Where there’s so little late at night / Down in the pit of a well” with the combination of defeat and longing that has always imbued both his voice and lyrics. Still, there’s a new element of hope here that isn’t as much an attempt to close the book as to continue the story; The Antlers may not be at home like before, but the palace they’ve moved into seems haunted.

“Familiars” is out June 16 via Transgressive Records.