The Antlers w/ Golden Isles @ Il Motore 02/17/2010

Last night, Brooklyn’s The Antlers headlined at Il Motore in front of a packed house. This was our first time at this venue, and it was pretty incredible. Tiny, intimate, low stage, nice bar…perfect place for a concert. Combine all this with a chill crowd and it made for a truly great musical experience.

Montreal’s own Golden Isles opened up for The Antlers. We have to admit, we’d never heard of the group before this show, but they were a lot of fun to watch. Six members strong, Golden Isles impressed us in more ways than one. They were young, talented, and absolutely knew how to capture the crowd’s attention. From their performance, we discovered that almost every member plays more than one instrument (including someone on sax, nice), they have a wide range of indie rock material, and they’re definitely a band to watch out for.

There’s not too much information out there about Golden Isles, so we decided to grab a quick 2-second interview with the keyboardist. Here’s what we got:

So, what’s your name? Richard Wenger
How old are you? 21
Are you a student? Yeah, I’m a U2 psychology major at McGill
How’s opening for The Antlers? The Antlers have been so chill. We have a big band, and they’ve been really accommodating.
Are you guys signed? Nope, but we just got a couple of publishing deals.
Any releases? We just released a 7″ album without a label. We’ll have an album coming this summer, though.

As for The Antlers, their performance was nothing short of amazing. Playing songs strictly off of Hospice, they opened with “Kettering” with quiet intensity and then immediately launched into a full, high-energy performance of “Sylvia” which got the crowd excited and set the tone for the rest of the show. Peter, Michael, and Darby were all clearly enjoying their performance, saying that they felt at home in Canada and setting the mood with some nice potted plants (Darby later told us they took them from their Toronto dressing room the night before). Hospice‘s lyrics are delicate, but last night Peter’s voice was fully showcased as he belted out typically more mellow songs. There was also a lot more jamming in between songs than we had expected, but it was a fantastic surprise. You know when you walk away from a show happy, not because you got close to the stage or because they played “your song”, but because you feel like you just got to meet the band through their music? Well, that’s what kind of show this was. The Antlers established a very cool vibe throughout the whole performance, showing that although they are new to touring, they can still put on a great show.

Check out some pictures of The Antlers from the show. We’ll have more coming soon. In the meantime, click here to read our interview with The Antler’s Michael Lerner.

Posted by Claire