Rarely is industry buzz so solidly deserved as the praise that has come for Hospice, the digitally remastered self-release that has been picked up by Frenchkiss and rereleased as a digital download, available June 23rd, and the album due out August 18th (if you get the record from iTunes, you also get two bonus tracks: "Sylvia, An Introduction" and "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing").
The album has rightfully topped the list of best releases of 2009 for NPR’s All Music Considered and has garnered praise from Pitchfork, NY Press, Flavorpill, and others. If you are already familiar with the solo work of Peter Silberman as “The Antlers” from his self-released 2007 album and EP, In the Attic of the Universe and Cold War, with Hospice, his lyrical power is enriched by collaboration with drummer Michael Lerner and Darby Cicci on trumpet and bowed banjo, as well as by vocal contributions from Brooklyn’s Sharon van Etten.
In interviews and on his blog, Silberman cites Hospice as evolving from July 2007 to August 2008. The weighty themes stem from Silberman’s personal experiences at a children’s cancer ward and from meditations on other manifestations of loss. The blend of helplessness, frustration, and the nightmarish sense of impotence in the face of inevitable but tragic ends is met with swelling and complex instrumentation that can, at times, offer solace even while amplifying the dissonance and charged emotional tone.
Silberman’s voice has been called “haunting,” and his vocals do glint with a quavering angelic frailty, but the true talent of this rising songwriter is to render all too real the unresolved and haunting work of memory when we lie down to dream. Track after track brings swells of imagery and instrumentation that surge and build into an irrepressible beauty. Sharon van Etten lends an additional layer of haunting melody to tracks like “Thirteen” and “Sylvia.” And though the singles “Two” and “Bear” are both strong and complex works that share the theme of relational strife, the album’s strength is in marrying these two to the overall narrative of loss.
Hospice works as a meditation that uses instrumentation and vocals to enact the ambiguity of troubling dreams. The album captures a sense of two very human and personal experiences: the helplessness of a dying relationship and the real and unavoidable eventuality of death for the terminally ill. Between the “Prologue” and “Epilogue,” the tracks run as a series of interrelated and poignant narratives. I suggest downloading the liner notes or purchasing the album on vinyl and listening to the work straight through to appreciate the intricate refrains of dreamlike repetitions of themes and the power of the lyrics, which read like the very best of surrealist poetry. Hospice is an accomplishment not to be missed. It is both an enjoyable listen and a deep exploration of our shared frailty in the face of the inevitable.
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