The Antlers - Hospice

The Antlers - Hospice

There is a significant difference between being "emotional" and being "emo." The one term has underlying notions regarding the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors one experiences as a result of the irony in one's life's triumphs and anguishes; the other describes the music Dashboard Confessional makes. It's not to say its necessity for music to be "emotional," but for some reason a lot of best music just seems to fall under that label (i.e. Arcade Fire's Funeral, Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago). Music that has no "emotion" just seems like making love to a fleshlight - it might be worth your time for 10 minutes a day, but it won't bring any lasting satisfaction or joy to your life. Maybe that's why music with "emotion" is the kind of music that you can enjoy the longest. And maybe that's why music that is "emo" can be readily found in an 8th grade girl's Facebook status (Jennifer is... my hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me).

Perhaps the latest and greatest (and clearest) example of emotion in music comes from The Antlers' Hospice. Like Arcade Fire's Funeral, Hospice seems to centralize around the idea of life in its final stages. Hospices are centers that focus on lessening the symptoms of a terminally ill patient's symptoms and rely heavily on the help of volunteers to care for the terminally ill - a definition that seems to genuinely reverberate true throughout the album.

If the album is a concept album (which it seems to be), I have to applaud The Antlers because a hospice, thought dark, is in a certain, twisted way a beautiful place - the place people go to die. You have to wonder what can be learned from going to a place like that. Maybe that's why lyrically speaking, Hospice, has an endless amount of kinda-makes-you-think-a-little lines.

"You said you hated my tone, it made you feel so alone, and so you told me I ought to be leaving. But something kept me standing by that hospital bed, I should have quit but instead I took care of you. You made me sleep and uneven, and I didn't believe them when they told me that there was no saving you."

-

"With the bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger, I'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singer. I'd happily take all those bullets inside you and put them inside of myself"

-

"Some patients can't be saved, but that burden's not on you. Don't ever let anyone tell you you deserve that"

I've only had this album for about 48 hours, so this could just be puppy love, but I'm gonna have to go ahead and give this a 47/48.