It’s easy to imagine that The Antlers are thoroughly tired of constantly hearing 2009’s Hospice, their third album, referred to as their first. It’s one of the consequences of any smash hit record; another is the weight of expectation laid on the follow-up.
Happily, Burst Apart could smash even the highest of expectations. It’s nothing less than an explosion of amazing songwriting that will leave fans dazed, amazed and lying in a scatter of superlatives.
Opener ‘I Don’t Want Love’ sets out the stall well, growing like a seed from a lazy beat and a few glisses of guitar into an earworm chorus – and the rush never lets up from there on.
‘No Widows’ is a synthy sliver of dirge-pop, ‘Parenthesis’ echoes classic Portishead and ‘French Exit’ is as jaunty as The Antlers can get without breaking a smile.
Heavily influenced by Radiohead, the album never bothers to rise above a canter, instead walking a delightfully blurry line between live instrumentation and electronics that gives it a timeless feel.
Of course frontman Peter Silberman’s shimmering falsetto still works like a can-opener to the heart, but the palpable sense of baroque gloom that filled Hospice is gone. It’s replaced by a kind of world-weary irony that makes for some surprisingly sexy music.
The Antlers are the kind of band Coldplay and Elbow lie awake at night imagining they could be: deft, delicate, crushingly emotive and entirely original.
Let’s not mince words: this is a new classic.