The Antlers at The Olympia Theatre, Dublin, 30th October 2014

The Antlers find themselves in a slightly peculiar situation at the moment that they are now probably too big for smaller venues like The Academy (where they played in 2011), but this is a surprisingly sparsely populated Olympia theatre: perhaps 50% capacity. It also feels like a slight budget production tonight – the light show is The Olympia “basic package”. The nature of the Antlers’ music is such that it would benefit from more scene-setting through back drops and specific lighting moods, but there is none of this tonight.

Recent album ‘Familiars’, rather predictably, features heavily in their set. Album openers Palace, Doppelganger and Hotel are also the first three songs played tonight and they set the scene nicely, in particular the hyperactive Doppelganger which features duelling trumpets playing seemingly random arpeggios. It seems these days that it’s not enough to be a keyboard player or a trumpet player – you must be able to do both simultaneously. Both Darby Cicci and their touring keys/brass player carry out this impressive feat with aplomb, but when the flute is brought out it has just enough processed effects to stop its falling into parody.

While ‘Familiars’ is an album which features a lot of trumpet amidst its swirling soundscapes, here on stage it has the perhaps unwanted effect of making many of that album’s songs sound very similar in structure. This is not something that could have been said of ‘Hospice’-era Antlers. When the opening staccato piano chords to Kettering from that album begin to chime, it brings one of the biggest cheers of the night. It will clearly be hard for Peter Silberman and Co. to move on from that brilliant album.

As for Silberman himself, it’s hard to recall anyone else moving about the stage quite as slowly – he looks like he’s in a tank of water. There is absolutely no hurry between songs. Silences of a couple of minutes are a regular feature, while the rest of the band try to fill the gaps between songs with doodles on keyboards and trumpets as the hum of the crowd grows ever louder. At one-point someone finally snaps, yelling “What are you waiting for?!”, bringing a wry chuckle from both the crowd and Silberman. He professes to have lost his voice a few days ago and just got it back. It’s such a fragile sounding thing that it seems that it could be quite easily lost and found again, but tonight there is little evidence of a fracture except the odd moment where he holds back from letting rip completely.

Putting the Dog to Sleep from 2011’s ‘Burst Apart’ closes out the main set in suitably climactic fashion. There’s been so little crowd interaction from Silberman that merely by walking to front of the stage while playing his guitar gets a big roar. There’s a definite sense of feeding off crumbs. Maybe he’s saving his voice. Silberman’s falsetto is at its best when it’s completely pared back, and so it is for Epilogue, the final song of the evening, before exploding into a thrilling crescendo. Perhaps they will be back in a smaller venue in a couple of years’ time. It would be no bad thing.