The Antlers - Hospice (Full Album - Official Audio)

Tracklist:
0:00 Prologue
2:34 Kettering
7:38 Sylvia
13:00 Atrophy
20:37 Bear
24:33 Thirteen
27:35 Two
33:27 Shiva
37:08 Wake
45:53 Epilogue

[krabiat]

The callback of "His/your face is up against yours/mine and you're/I'm too terrified to speak" is Really drives home the point of Sylvia being a troubled and traumatised person and creating another troubled and traumatised person as a result.

[PsychoNada]

every night i am drunk and i go back to this album, every time i think of my twin sister. the unlucky one, dying from something that i never had. i think about how it should have been me, in the hospice, in the morgue, in the grave. but for some reason i was chosen to stay. perhaps so i can remember how beautiful and how truly awful she was, slowly dying before my eyes. someone with my face, wasting away. every time i think it was a mistake. i should have been the one to go. but still, i am here. a soul without a half. only there to remember her.

[vjdakingable]

Just came in to say this is one of the best records I've ever heard. Truly one to come back to in 20 years time.
While I'm writing this I'm reminded of what my Grandfather used to say about his favorite book, "Siddharta" by Hesse. He said that you could read it in every stage of your life and new aspects of the book would reveal themselves to you. No reading would be like the others.

I feel the same here.
Thank you.

[viklepikle]

This is the only album that I've ever cried from.

[thevirtualjonathan]

A friend of mine just told me her old best friend is being moved to a hospice.
She has cirrhosis and only family are allowed to visit.
I have had the misfortune of knowing many people whose lives were cut short and it never gets easier.
I never want to give up or lose empathy.
I remember stumbling upon this album shortly after it's release, a dear friend and former lover had just passed away a couple months prior.
This album reminds me of so many people now.

[archimedesskullkrusher]

man, the way certain lines and melodies are repeated throughout the album tie it all together so well, thematically. the consistency of this album is so magnificent.

[divineatrocity]

This album has helped me through so much. When I was four my mom got diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, so cancer was just something that I lived around a lot. Her cancer had gone into remission a few years back, but last year it went out of remission and we were sure she was gonna die. But we were wrong. Instead it was my dad who had lung cancer that wasn't caught until it was too late. I had to take care of him, lift him up just so he could drink. He went from a strong truck driver who handled fixing everything in the house to just skin and bones... This album really made it easier to get through, every night I would put it on and fall asleep. The day he died I was playing "wake" on guitar in my room. I miss him so much and I wish I could tell him how much he meant to me, even though I never showed it.

[josikinz]

oh boy, they finally made an album that makes me cry about my two biggest traumas simultaneously, an abusive relationship AND the death of a loved one via terminal illness. Thank you Antlers! ^_^

[michaelb]

Bear hits so close to home it should be a crime. the guilt one feels after such a decision will weigh on them forever. Bear nails that feeling and describes it in vivid detail. Two is another spot on song. the emotions this album goes through are so raw and personal. truly an absolute masterpiece.

[yyyyyyyay]

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Tracklist:
0:00 Prologue
2:34 Kettering
7:38 Sylvia
13:00 Atrophy
20:37 Bear
24:33 Thirteen
27:35 Two
33:27 Shiva
37:08 Wake
45:53 Epilogue

[sappho]

A masterpiece beyond words. This is the only album that comes close to, and could arguably beat, In the Aeroplane over the sea. The sadness, the beauty, the joy, the subject matter. The final track especially is so, so wonderful and haunting. It's an album as close to great literature I've heard, and melodies that are just as brilliant as the words they accompany. Sometimes it seems like an absolute miracle that such a work of art could come into existence. It makes you wonder how deeply someone had to feel to write this.

[ramenruu]

YOU GUYS NEED MORE RECOGNITION OH MY GOD THIS WERE THE BEST MINUTES IN MY LIFE.

[TheCivildecay]

My wife just broke up with me and will leave me soon (taking our 2 kids with her)... this album is just what I need now..
The lines: "Tell me when you think that we became so unhappy
Wearing silver rings with nobody clapping
When we moved here together we were so disappointed
Sleeping out of tune with our dreams disjointed" is so accurate that it kills me everytime...

[Chicken-evln]

Epilogue and Sylvia really hit different after losing someone

[MG-mnig]

Ok, wow, didn't think I was gonna cry tonight. I always thought this album was specifically about losing to someone to illness. I guess that's the beauty of it, is we can all find ways to relate. Reading the lyrics, I cannot believe how much I relate in the sense of being in an abusive relationship. God damn. What a timeless record. I hope anybody who can relate to this album in anyway is able to find peace. We're all going through it, but that doesn't mean we can't support each other.

[ZachGuajardo]

Sylvia Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Please curtains in
Start us off, you swing first
Sorry, I don't know what I said, but you're crying now again
And that only makes it worse

[Pre-Chorus]
Let me do my job
Let me do my job

[Chorus]
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?
[Verse 2]
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

[Pre-Chorus]
Let me do my job
And let me do my job

[Chorus]
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?

[Outro]
Sylvia, can't you see what you are doing?
Can't you see I'm scared to speak
And I hate my voice 'cause it only makes you angry
Sylvia, I only talk when you are sleeping
That's when I tell you everything
And I imagine that somehow you're going to hear me

[ZachGuajardo]

Two Lyrics

[Verse 1]
In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up
When a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough."
He brought me out into the hall, I could have sworn it was haunted
And told me something that I didn't know that I wanted:
To hear that there was nothing that I could do to save you
The choir's gonna sing, and this thing is gonna kill you
Something in my throat made my next words shake
And something in the wires made the light-bulbs break
There was glass inside my feet and raining down from the ceiling
It opened up the scars that had just finished healing
It tore apart the canyon running down your femur
I thought that it was beautiful, it made me a believer
And as it opened I could hear you howling from your room
But I hid out in the hall until the hurricane blew
When I reappeared and tried to give you something for the pain
You came to hating me again and just sang your refrain:
[Chorus]
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
Your daddy was an asshole and he fucked 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

[Verse 2]
Tell me when you think that we became so unhappy
Wearing silver rings with nobody clapping
When we moved here together we were so disappointed
Sleeping out of tune with our dreams disjointed
It killed me to see you getting always rejected
But I didn't mind the things you threw, the phones I deflected
I didn't mind you blaming me for your mistakes
I just held you in the door-frame through all of the earthquakes
But you packed up your clothes in that bag every night
I would try to grab your ankles, what a pitiful sight
But after over a year, I stopped trying to stop you from stomping out that door
Coming back like you always do

[Bridge]
Well no one's gonna fix it for us, no one can
You say that "No one's gonna listen, no one understands."
And so there's no open doors, there's no way to get through
There's no other witnesses, just us two

[Verse 3]
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

[Chorus]
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
Your daddy was an asshole and he fucked 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

[ZachGuajardo]

Epilogue Lyrics

[Verse 1]
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
And like before, you've got no interest in the life you live when you're awake
Your dreams still follow storylines like fictions you would make
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
Men and women in blue and white,  they are singing all around you
With heavy shovels holding earth, you're being buried to your neck
In that hospital bed,  being buried quite alive now
I'm trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together
[Chorus]
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing

[Verse 2]
I've woken up, I'm in our bed, but there's no breathing body there beside me
Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep
But I know better as my eyes adjust,  you've been gone for quite a while now
And I don't work there in the hospital, they had to let me go
When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift
I think you buried me awake, my one and only parting gift
But you return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep
Your face is up against mine, and I'm too terrified to speak

[Chorus]
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing
You're screaming
And cursing
And angry
And hurting me
And then smiling
And crying
Apologizing

[ZachGuajardo]

Thirteen Lyrics

[Verse 1: Sharon Van Etten]
Pull me out
Pull me out
Can't you stop this all from happening?
Close the doors and keep them out

[Verse 2: Sharon Van Etten & Peter Silberman]
Dig me out
Oh, dig me out
Couldn't you have kept this all from happening?
Dig me out from under our house

[comedybearsfriendizesvan]

I know this isnt really my place to vent, being I saw some comments that were pretty upsetting. But I'd like to just say, the line, "The bone that had abused you" hit harder then how my dad would. I come here and play this nearly every night reminding myself of my past, through the sexual assaults too the suave abuse. And knowing how strong I was to make it ontop, half of the time I think the abuse I've gone through was nothing, being my mom and dad would always tell me, "My mom would've went way harder" just to put the hammer of guilt upon me. But, its songs like these that just open me up like a book, and allows me to just cry my pain out. I've never really vented to anyone, I avoided pills, therapy, being that after years of endless abuse and being put down everytime I tried fighting back. And not too long ago, I tried to take my own life. I've tried 3 times now, and well everytime I try, I just get flash backs and waves of guilt leading me to fail every single time, but to only step foot back on the chair. And wear my necklace of freedom. But I won't say too much being I still think what I've been through Isn't worse then having to take care of your mom and dad with cancer. Or being stuck with emotional abuse.

Take care everyone. This road is rocky, but the wheels are only stronger on the flat end.