Catharsis Beneath the Competition

Everyone expects a catharsis at these things. The faces read expectation and the bodies read suspense. The lead singer, accompanied by a euphoric “wall of sound” is working up the scale to the climactic high note, his signature falsetto. Everyone knows this particular note and is waiting to hear it because they have heard the record too. This new record, Burst Apart, is the ostensible occasion for the appearance of the band, The Antlers, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on this downcast Tuesday evening.  The singer, Peter Silberman, donning a bicep accentuating, epaulette shirt and an oblique haircut likely culled from a jazz age mugshot is ready. Without hesitation, he achieves the sustaining note. In this moment, the crowd reaction in the crowd is evident and three-tiered. First is the impressiveness, the recognizing the record had not deceived them in their expectations. Second was crowd scanning for the reactions of other in the crowd. Third, and finally, if the sustained wail had not ceased yet, was the catharsis, the romantic and actualized moment in which place could be phantasmagoric. The faces lose their edge, the postures fade, and the crowd, for a brief second, if that, is left in awe.

            I arrive at the venue early only to wait on a damp patio with all the other overly eager concertgoers, impatiently killing time on their phones or offering speculative set list chatter (for those more knowledgeable fans) to their friends. Nobody talks to people who had not obviously come to the venue with them. In this way, there does not appear to be the slightest semblance of a regular community of attendees at the show.

The venue is a recently renovated warehouse with immaculate wood floors, several bars, clean lighting, and colorful realist portraits of legendary bluesmen Howlin’ Wolf. The feel is definitively sanitizing in a distracting way that makes the venue seem completely indistinctive to the area. Indeed, the tone for the disorienting sense of place of the show is set by the sensation of arriving in Pawtucket on public bus. The three sets of Caucasian students coming to The Met juxtaposed harshly against the largely Black and Hispanic population of the bus.

I ask around on the line into the show and among the early arrivers. Everyone is there to see the band. Possible explanations of this include the relatively steep price discount, and the distant venue.  I meet several groups in the audience. There is a group of twenty-somethings who came to “see the Antlers before they blow up”. There is a group of college students that respond to my question with suspicious body language, indicating a sort pre-emptive establishment of their authority to be in this place. One replies, “I saw this band when they played a small little venue by where I live and they put on a great show. I chilled with the lead singer. Nice guy.”

The audience is now congregated around the stage. The more aggressive members have secured their spot closer to the front. I meet a Brown University student, wearing straight-cut jeans, clunky sneakers. He makes it clear that he is here for the music by proudly displaying his shirt emblazoned with the name of the opening band, Yellow Ostrich. “I saw these guys a while ago, and loved their stuff,” he volunteers, “I came for them more than the Antlers.” Several audience members see his shirt and gesture derisively.

Shortly after, Yellow Ostrich takes the stage. The band is anchored by a lanky and youthful guitarist with shaggy brown hair wearing black Levi’s and a loose flannel shirt. The drummer is wearing a simple button-down, with self-cropped shorts. The bassist is notably older and wearing clunky boots, roomy jeans and a black t-shirt. Their songs are short and relatively homogenous, notably featuring identical mid-song breakdowns. The lyrics center around slightly personalized “you-subject” clichés. The guitarist-singer sings proudly but with a self-aware gaze. Meanwhile, the drummer is clean and upbeat in his playing, driving the songs with ample floor-tom drumming. The audience displays a blend of apathy, and respectful curiosity, customary to a modern indie-rock performance, a genre and musical-cultural milieu in which both bands squarely fit into. During the more upbeat numbers, there is an upsurge in interest as manifested in attentive looks especially from the females of the crowd.  Females constitute roughly a fifth of the now 150 attendees. At no point does the rampant texting decline. There is a noticeable amount of filming of the songs on IPhones, indeed to the point where several attendees make no direct look at the performance.

After forty minutes their set is over, and the band migrates over to the door to work their “merch table.” This maneuver establishes the band as approachable and therefore properly within the confines of indie rock conduct of non-fame. During the setbreak, I talk with some crowd members. A student at Providence College tells me that the band was decent but reminded him of a combination of several more known acts, or a “derivative version of Vampire Weekend and Spoon”.

Twenty minutes later, after ample technical set-up, The Antlers casually take the stage. All are wearing well-fitted outfits with boots, skinny jeans, and tight-fitting plaid shirts. All feature a similar hairstyle, although the keys player takes it to its extreme, with bangs at a length that require him to rescue his vision thrice a minute with a pronounced hair flip. The band begins with a more unsettling number, and continues a set peppered with a mix of songs deliberately ordered to offer an arc in mood.

The audience listens intently, indeed texting is down and no one talks during the songs or between the songs. Indeed, the extreme quiet between numbers is a source of awkward tension noticeable amidst the entire crowd until towards the end when Silberman makes a joke about it in his banter. The dancing comes in a range, from passive listening with empty facial expressions to exaggerated head nods, almost flailing, indicating a visceral receiving of the music. The musicians themselves move distinctly, with the keys player bobbing similar to a DJ might, while the auxiliary guitarist rocks, in the literal sense, his guitar violently at climactic moments.

The music ranges in tone but the hallmarks are found in the confessional tone and lyrics, the use of long melodic climaxes, lethargic but steady drumming, and ubiquitous use of the “wall of sound” technique to add auditory grandeur.

After an hour, the band breaks briefly and comes back to the approximately 300-person crowd for an encore. Running a little long, the crowd is visibly worn down by the end of the show. Nonetheless, this weariness juxtaposes against a steady stream of superlative declarations about the performance ranging from “what a transcendent experience” to “that sounded dope”.

The performance, in many ways, seems to anchor around the paradoxical tendencies of the audience members to bring certain cultural expectations about the cathartic nature of the music, with the exclusionary realm of attempting to establish one’s legitimacy in a setting where knowledge of, or even the production of the music itself, of the music is seen as indicative of subcultural capital. Throughout the show, many male concertgoers gave the impression that they seemed to accept the music as a meaningful enterprise only so far as to maintain it as a vehicle for their own theoretical advantage. They saw themselves on the stage, and the fashion of the bands matching the crowd encouraged this belief. Many crowd members, directly enquired into the specific gear used by the bands. Comments such as the earlier remark about “derivative” bands, illustrate a proclivity to marginalize the originality of the onstage performers. It is my analysis that this intense desire to be the performer of these romantically emotive songs with tender lyrics, and searing falsettos is to desire to situate oneself as the romantic center of attention of the room. Indeed the lavish attention poured onto to Silberman and the keyboardist, confirms this. Many of the audience members, in more tender moments, noticeably looked around the crowd for enrapt facial expressions. The lack of any evident community encouraged this notion. At no point in the show are the conventions about personal space broken or conversations among strangers abundant. Nonetheless, evidenced by the superlative commenting, and the momentarily rapt faces, it seems that beneath the certain audience ego, there is a real connection to the music. Beneath the fashion aesthetics, people are moved and it is conceivable that it is for this sensation that people are indeed drawn to these shows.

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