The Antlers and Little Scream at Music Hall of Williamsburg

Concert Review

The Antlers and Little Scream at Music Hall of Williamsburg

The Antlers played back to back sold out shows in their hometown of New York, to help kick off their summer tour and support their new album Burst Apart. Technically it was their third concert of the tour with Montreal’s Little Scream, who also just released her debut album The Golden Record and have a launch party at Il Motore in Montreal tonight (May 25). I caught their show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, on their first night in New York.

Little Scream (aka Laurel Sprengelmeyer) is a singer-songwriter from Montreal who’s debut album has been getting much praise from the indie-rock community. The Golden Record is one of my favorite picks for 2011. It’s a complex recording with such variety in musical styles.

There has been a rotating cast of supporting musicians that have toured with Little Scream over the last year. Her MusicNow performance in Cincinnati a couple weeks ago included the all-star line up of Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire) Bryce and Aaron Dessner (The National), Owen Pallett, and Sharon Van Etten. For this show at MHOW, Little Scream was joined with another stellar line up of musicians that included Marcus Paquin (Silver Starling), Jamie Thompson (The Unicorns/Islands), Kaveh Nabatian (Belle Orchestre) and Jess Robertson.

Little Scream as usual had a great connection with the audience. There were some moments of bantering while tuning guitars, and it seemed that everyone in the band was having fun. Marcus’ addition on lead guitar added such energy to the songs, especially on my favorite tracks of “Amahl,” “Heron and the Fox,” and “Red Hunting Jacket.” Check out The Golden Record (Secretly Canadian) and the first video for Red Hunting Jacket.

After a quick stage set up, The Antlers came out and launched into “I Don’t Want Love,” the first song from their recently released album Burst Apart (French Kiss Records). The band added these really cool banks of lights off to the side that provided gorgeous mood lighting that melded perfectly with lead singer/guitarist Peter Silberman’s high ranged voice and down-tempo songs. Everything seemed to mix so well together, from Darby Cicci’s keys, to Michael Lerner’s drums, and Tim Mislock on bass/guitar.

The set list for the night was focused on Burst Apart. In addition to opening with “I Don’t Want Love,” some other highlights included the catchy song “Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out,” the chilled out “Rolled Together,” and my favorite song “Putting the Dog to Sleep.” The new album is such a great follow up to 2009’s Hospice. The show wouldn’t have been complete without a performance of “Kettering,” which was the first of four encore songs. After a solid concert, and of course a surprise appearance of a gigantic balloon man on stage (a gift from friend Sharon Van Etten), I think it’s safe to say people left the venue pretty happy.

Catch the Antlers and Little Scream on tour across the US and Canada until mid June.

Set list for the Antlers on 5/19: