On Hospice, Brooklyn’s the Antlers deliver a heartbreaking concept album from the perspective of two central characters: an abusive bone cancer patient on her hospital death bed and a committed nurse who becomes attached and falls deeply in love, despite impending tragedy. Written over the course of two years by core member Peter Silberman and then enhanced with additional tracks by Darby Cicci, Michael Lerner, Justin Stivers, and Sharon Van Etten, it’s a woe-heavy record that could easily be crushed by its own weight, except for the fact that it’s delivered with such ease. The narrative (completely written out in the liners) is gripping — full of novelesque prose, reminiscent of Lou Reed’s Berlin — and the musical accompaniment complements Silberman’s lyrics perfectly. Music box melodies are sung in a wobbly falsetto over acoustic guitar and piano, as tinges of Radiohead (Amnesiac era) electro production add accent, waiting until the perfect moment to swell up to monumental crescendos full of keyboards, accordions, harmonicas, harps, and trumpets. Arcade Fire are an overt touchstone, as are Neutral Milk Hotel and Cloud Cult, but Silberman’s new composite proves itself a standout group among the many other lo-fi artists and chamber poppers. As a songwriter, he has matured into an artist with a masterful sense of dynamics, and he ebbs and flows from one chorus to the next as he multi-tracks sparse sections into grandiose ones. In the same balancing act, Silberman tones down the album’s deep personal sense of love and loss with occasional bits of dry humor. Morbid lines like “Some patients can’t be saved, but that burden’s not on you” are masked with uplifting music, and the morose moments are soon forgotten when the purposely less poignant line “All the while I’ll know we’re fucked and not getting unfucked soon” keeps the experience from becoming too much of a Hallmark tearjerker. Keep the tissue box handy, though — the closer is a doozy. – Jason Lymangrover