By Jake Feala:

I think the derelict woman that approached me on the street after the show said it best: “Poor lady said how’d you come by this cigarette, I said God save the Queen. God save the Queen!” God save the Queen, indeed, crazy person.

I think what she was trying to say is that no matter how big a band is in the United Kingdom, it’s still very tough to break into the US. When I first saw Editors three years ago, they were already pretty huge in England and were touring America behind the success of their first album The Back Room, which had sold millions and gone platinum over there. Here across the pond, though, they were only playing to one or two hundred people, tops, at an out-of-the-way dive bar. The show had a ton of energy, though, and turned me on to The Back Room. But since then (a span of about 20 years in Internet Music Time) I had heard very little about them, so I was excited to hear they were coming to House of Blues, one of the major venues in town.

I was just as excited to see that the Antlers were opening, but, from the perspective of a music-blog-following, Twittering, Pitchfork-reading-but-not-admitting indie fan, it’s hard to forget that swelling hype from the underground is no match for the draw of a band with two platinum albums, no matter where those albums sold. So it shouldn’t have surprised me so much to see that, instead of your standard hipster set, the crowd was packed with Joy Division T-shirts, bowler hats, finger gloves, dudes that looked like Ringo, spikey-haired British rockers, and English accents echoing off cans of Guinness. I swear I saw Andy Capp from the funny pages, complete with bulbous red nose and plaid flat cap. Hence the crowd was not too interested in The Antlers, but no matter, more room for me up front.

I love sad music, so of course songs from Antlers’ Hospice feature prominently on my Drink Whiskey And Cry playlist. But those lyrics are beyond sad, man, to the point where I even feel a little guilty deriving cheap pleasure from it. In Hospice, gorgeous atmospherics package heart-crushing lyrics about a terminally ill child. When a couple of guys up front started jumping around, I wanted to shout “How can you fuckers dance? Can’t you hear the kid is dying?” but that would have been unreasonable. Instead I stood still and let myself get goosebumps while singer Peter Silberman’s voice cracked and wavered on soaring highs as if breaking under the weight of the lyrics. Their set was short but they managed to play through more than half of their songs before a slightly awkward exit where it seemed neither the band nor the audience were aware that they were finished.

Pairing The Antlers with Editors was a schizophrenic decision — the bands’ sounds could not be more different, at least within the sphere of 21st-century indie music. But perhaps there is some logic to it: if songs from Hospice were the last thing a crowd heard before leaving the theater, there might be an increase in car-off-bridge accidents that night. As a remedy, Editors driving beats and hooksy hooks were there to lift our spirits before we hit the freeways. Compared with last time I saw them, they incorporated much more synth in their sound, and their songs are more infused with the arena flavor of The Killers.

Lead vocalist Tom Smith came out with sideburns that looked like an upside-down Giving Tree, coupled with a sweet ‘stache. Throughout the show, Smith rocked dinosaur arms and cradled the mic like Axl. On mute, his stage persona would be indistinguishable from singer from the National; together his mustache and voice recalled Snidely Whiplash.

Though most of the show had an infectious energy, the low point was when they slowed it down with trippy, ambient beats that work better for Portishead than behind Smith’s low, emotive vocals. They brought it back quickly, however, and closed the show with a rocking sequence of songs centered around what they do best: Edge-style tremolo guitars and dance-rock backbeats littered with 16th note high-hats that made the Brits go wild.

God save the Queen!

Editors and The Antlers play the Vic Theatre in Chicago on Monday, April 15th.

Buy: The Antlers – Hospice | Editors – In This Light & On This Evening

Myspace: The Antlers
Myspace: Editors