Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
It's not an easy concept to sell to people.
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- Hey guys, I've got this great record on permanent rotation right now. Can't get enough of it.
- Oh, yeah? What is is, Clint?
- Erm, it's by this Brooklyn band called the Antlers. It's called Hospice....
- Odd title, Clint.
- Well, yeah. It's sort of a concept album. It's about this guy and his relationship with a dying partner. She's got cancer, I think. It's pretty much written in the second person. She, erm, dies at the end. It's pretty bleak.
- Riiiiiiiiggghhhttttttttt......
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And yet it is stunning and beautiful and incredibly moving and life-affirming. Peter Silberman's delicate falsetto is perfect for the mood and subject matter and the aural texture of the record is often exhilarating and always inventive.
The exact nature of the relationship between Silberman's protagonist and the dying woman in his life is always ambiguous. I've read in various reviews that it is a care worker in a hospice becoming involved with a dying woman in his place of work or sometimes that it is simply a tale of a man watching his wife die. In my own mind, it is mostly the latter but to me there is an added layer of mystery: I wonder if the stricken narrator begins to see himself as much as a carer in the hospice as partner in life.
Whatever it is, it is no simple, mushy Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neil tear-jerker. Their relationship is messy, complex and on the rocks. His feelings towards her are sometimes resentful and embittered and she is clearly a difficult woman. She doesn't always seem too grateful for his care and really who can blame her? She's dying. Dying.
"Sylvia"
Sylvia, get your head out of the oven.
Go back to screaming and cursing,
remind me again how everyone betrayed you.
Sylvia, get your head out of the covers.
Let me take your temperature,
you can throw the thermometer right back at me,
if that’s what you want to do, okay?“Please, please calm down.
Steady out, I’m terrified.
Sorry.
I want us to ally,
But you swing on little knives.
They’re only sharp on one side.
Let me do my job.
Let me do my job.
But there are moments of tender, wry optimism such as "Bear."
There’s a bear inside your stomach,
a cub’s been kicking you for weeks,
and if this isn’t all a dream,
well then we’ll cut him from beneath.
Well we’re not scared of making caves,
or finding food for him to eat.
We’re terrified of one another,
terrified of what that means.
But we’ll make only quick decisions,
and you’ll just keep me in the waiting room,
and all the while I’ll know we’re ****ed,
and not getting un-****ed soon.
And then, out of nowhere, a desperately hearbreaking plee from Sylvia:
“Pull me out… pull me out… can’t you stop this all from happening? Close the doors and keep them out.
“Dig me out… Oh, dig me out… Couldn’t you have kept this all from happening? Dig me out from under our house.â€
Angry, embittered rants ensue. Silberman tears into her family and points out how much he doesn't deserve this sh*t she's giving because he's the one who always really cared:
You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare.
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair.
Then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying.
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying.
Daddy was an asshole, he ****ed you up,
built the gears in your head, now he greases them up.
And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating.
“Eighty-seven pounds!†and this all bears repeating.
[Poor language removed], he is angry and yet he couldn't give a sh*t.
There’s two people living in one small room,
from your two half-families tearing at you,
two ways to tell the story (no one worries),
two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry,
two people talking inside your brain,
two people believing that I’m the one to blame,
two different voices coming out of your mouth,
while I’m too cold to care and too sick to shout.
And then, just as he's finished making his point, she dies.
Gone.
Suddenly every machine stopped at once, and the monitors beeped the last time.
Hundreds of thousands of hospital beds, and all of them empty but mine.
And you feel your own heart being ripped from your chest just like his must have been and you feel guilty on his behalf too, like it was you ranting at her as she died. His twisted love.
So now I’m sleeping next to mousetraps, in a bed of all our clothes, while I hope that she won’t come home. It was easier to lock the doors and kill the phones than to show my skin, because the hardest thing is never to repent for someone else, it’s letting people in.
And then a epilogue. A dream:
In a nightmare, I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you. You’re asleep, I’m screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up. So I lie down against your back, until we’re both back in the hospital. But now it’s not a cancer ward, we’re sleeping in the morgue.
And you’re screaming, and cursing, and angry, and hurting me, and then smiling, and crying, apologizing.
And you realise that his life has yet to begin again but that, in a dream, he made some sort of peace with her. And one day he will be able to forgive himself and realise that he did what he could and in so doing he will be able to forgive himself.
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So there you have it - Hospice by the Antlers. A record about a terminally ill woman and her f*cked-up carer. KC and the Sunshine Band, it ain't. And, really, I can't begin to do the album justice merely by writing about it. It is Complex, deeply moving, funny, harrowing and incredibly rewarding. iTunes tells me it is easily my most played record since I reinstalled my mac two years ago and that is because, above all, it seems to reveal new layers, new meanings with every listen.
[video=youtube;xSi_FE52TAY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSi_FE52TAY[/video]
Don't say I didn't warn you.
