In Review: The Antlers - 'Solstice'

On the surface, 'Solstice', the third single from The Antlers’ first album in seven years, Green to Gold , is a simple track - saccharine sweet instrumentals and falsettos with a simple chorus and sunnily bright images. It feels floaty and carefree, like memories that are filtering in and out without care – images and details sharpen and blur, fade away and blend together. What becomes clear, however, is that the sunshine is somewhat strained and filtered. Frontman Peter Silberman remembers moments of innocence, brightness, and simplicity through the filter of difficulty, length, and heaviness.

As the song progresses, we get the suggestion of someone scrolling absently through old pictures. They pause from time to time to remember a memory that the picture evokes, then they remember that there’s someone next to them. They turn the image towards the other person, half-smiling, and attempt to tell the story that the image brings to mind, but stop halfway through. It’s suggestive and forlorn, there’s no bitterness, and there isn’t necessarily sadness. But there’s something there, underneath the almost cloying instrumental, that lets itself be known to any listener who has also been reflective and somewhere in between okay and not okay. 

It’s a fitting track for these 'pandemic days' (whether or not it was written specifically for now) as we sit inside and remember vague memories of what feels like another time. The days pass slowly and quickly all at once, and looking back at the year gone, and the year before, leads us “Winding back down the decade past.”

There’s something sunnily contemplative and delightful on the horizon, with the release of The Antlers’ first album in seven years. And they’re reminding us, without the smug superiority of so many other celebrities who have attempted to distill the idea into a pithy sound-bite, to keep “bright, bright, bright.”

Green to Gold is out on 26th March via Trangressive Records.