Image via Antler House Facebook
Debut albums tend to be curiosities. There’s a purity about them and the way they capture bands during their early stages. Sometimes groups get everything right the first time out and their debut turns out to be their undisputed high watermark. But just as often, debut albums are outliers, the product of a band that hasn’t fully formed its sound yet.
Sean Anderson of the Milwaukee trio Antler House has a complicated relationship with his band’s 2014 debut album Through the Dirt. He poured himself into it, obsessing over the tiny details as he painted a sophisticated canvas of intricately composed indie-folk with shades of Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear. It’s got some truly beautiful songs on it. It’s also a pretty inaccurate representation of the band.
“There have been shows we played after releasing our first album and people would say, ‘We really like you guys, but you don’t sound anything like that album,’ and they’re right,” Anderson admits. “We were really more of a project than a band when we recorded it.
“The first record was a lot of songs I’d written when we were just starting out, and all we had for drums when we recorded them was a tom and a snare,” Anderson explains. “So everything has a softer feel to it. Looking back, I spent so much time going over that first record, adding overdubs and obsessing over it, just to make it this thing that doesn’t sound like three people.”
The group set out to remedy that on their sophomore album, Across the Waves, which Anderson calls a much truer representation of the band. Anderson credits his neighboring Riverwest bands for the shift in direction. “I write mostly on acoustic guitar, so in the beginning I was writing folkier songs, but as we started going to more shows we started listening to more post-punk and heavier stuff like that,” Anderson says. “Our sound really evolved as we witnessed more local bands.”
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As a result Across the Waves is louder and wirier than its predecessor, leaning more heavily on bedrock indie influences like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill, while playing up guitarist John Johnson’s nervy, tangled riffs, and drummer John McCabe’s antsy percussion. Anderson even shouts and yelps his way through the album’s mathy closer “Make,” something it’s hard to imagine him doing on their debut. Anderson credits his bandmates for forcing him to loosen up a bit.
“With the first album, I was really nitpicky about laying down the right vocal take,” Anderson says. “For this one I tried to be better about that. John McCabe was like, ‘Just go out there and do one vocal take for each song.’ I ended up doing a couple of them for most songs, but it was nice to just get out there and lay it all down on the line.”
Antler House play an album release show Saturday, April 30 at Company Brewing at 10 p.m. with Paper Holland (who will be releasing their own Fast Food EP) and Ugly Brothers.
