“Come closer to me, I need to hear you breathe/ Come closer to me, I’m weak” begins The Antlers’ Darby Cicci on Fire Escape, the Brooklynite having newly, if only temporarily shed time-honoured associates Peter Silberman and Michael Lerner in order that he might frolic under the thinly veiled guise of School of Night.
Fire Escape is, aside from a creative escape route of sorts, a to all intents and purposes suitably nocturnal listen – one aflame with an intimate intensity, and an intense intimacy alike. “Keep your eyes on the road for me” Cicci continues, sounding increasingly lonesome and so too vulnerable, as he thus appears akin to an estranged fawn in an obscure forest. There’s a consequent tenderness to it; the sound of Darby finding his figurative feet as it were, while he begins to feel his fumbled way through a potentially forlorn darkness to linger a long while yet. But there’s a luminous promise to it all too, and never does Cicci sound caught in the headlamps, emphatically assuring: “Every flicker is a light pretending that you adore me” in a vocal tone distinctly redolent of Silberman’s opaque wail. And, dextrously further decorated with understated brass and scintillating glimmers of shimmering guitar, if Fire Escape isn’t exactly as quiet as Hospice, then it’s immediately commensurately confident.