The Bowery Presents

The Bowery Ballroom upcoming shows

The Antlers
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Sometimes you have to put yourself first, no matter how difficult that notion seems; no matter how much time and effort you’ve already put into this one person—the person who’s reduced your very being to its absolute core. Just ask Peter Silberman, the string-pulling founder of The Antlers, a solo project that suddenly went widescreen on the self-released Hospice LP (now receiving a proper widespread pressing through Frenchkiss). The first Antlers effort to feature two key permanent players—powerhouse drummer Michael Lerner and the layer-lathering multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci—it’s an album with a sound that’s actually as ambitious as its concept.

“Hospice came from the idea of caring for a terminal patient who’s mentally abusive to you,” says Silberman. “You don’t have the right to argue with them, either, because they’re the one who’s dying here; they’re the one that’s been dealt a wrong hand. So you take it, but you can only take so much. Eventually, you realize that this person is just destroying you.”

Appropriately enough, Hospice’s 10 distinct chapters resonate on debilitating sonic and lyrical levels, from the hypnotic harp and tension-ratcheting build of “Two” to the sing-or-sink choruses of “Bear” and the speaker-rattling peaks of “Sylvia,” easily one of the year’s most immediate epics. It’s here, amidst contrasting shards of ambient noise, sweeping strings and smoky horns, where The Antlers truly transcend Silberman’s singer-songwriter beginnings—a striking escalation of expectations first hinted at on 2008’s New York Hospitals EP. The progression doesn’t end there, either. In a move that could be taken as the riff-raking extension of his thorough guitar training (from the age of 6 ‘til right before college), “Atrophy” and “Wake” delve into sheets of distortion, subtle shades of soul, cicada-like effects and enough movements to fill an entire EP.

“We were going for something that’d be dense but not too complicated,” explains Silberman. “I hate the word ‘lush,’ but I guess that’s the best way of describing it. The structures are like pop songs—verse/chorus, verse/chorus—but the sound is a little more shoegaze-y or post-rocky.”
It’s about to get even more complicated, too, as The Antlers’ Technicolor-tinged trio take all of Hospice’s songs—and three previous releases—in a completely different direction, jettisoning a note-for-note rendition of the record for “a massive sound” doused in delay, reverb and unrehearsed chaos. And to think Cicci was a stage actor with a desire to drop it all for music just a few years ago.

“Hospice was the clear indication that this isn’t a singer-songwriter thing at all,” says Silberman. “Whatever we record next is going to define the three of us as a ‘band.’

He continues, “I always figured I’d be the ‘shredder’ in a group…But things somehow ended up this way.”

We wouldn’t have it any other way, either.
Uninhabitable Mansions
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Uninhabitable Mansions is a Brooklyn-based band and art collective.



Robbie Guertin (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah) sings and plays guitar. Annie Hart (Au Revoir Simone) sings and plays keyboards. Tyler Sargent (CYHSY) sings and plays bass. Chris Diken (Radical Dads) plays guitar. Doug Marvin (Dirty On Purpose) plays drums.



The band released its first album, Nature Is a Taker, in October 2009. It released the 7-inch record We Misplaced a Cobra in the Uninhabitable Mansion in February 2009.



Uninhabitable Mansions has also published books and rulers, scored a dance piece, released a limited-edition print, participated in an art fair, drawn comics about sandwiches, and installed more than 50 fish in a storefront window.
Sharon Van Etten
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Sharon is from New Jersey with strong roots in TN.
She now lives in Brooklyn, NY where she plays shows often and records at home in her bedroom.
Her songs are available on myspace (myspace.com/sharonvanetten)
and her website (www.sharonvanetten.com)
She went on her first UK tour with Meg Baird in January 2008.

Sharon will be opening for Great Lake Swimmers on their European tour in May, kicking it off with a show in London with Beirut and Shearwater.

She has a new album coming out on Language of Stone called ‘because I was in Love’.
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