As a follow-up to each subscriber playlist, I record a short podcast that breaks down one of the playlist’s songs and explains why I included it. I explore the song’s history and influence, how I first heard it, why it’s continued to stick with me over the years, and/or its place in the playlist.
For this episode, I’m breaking down Antarctica’s “Closetful of Churches,” which originally appeared on 23:03 (1998, File 13 Records).
This song was featured in the May 2022 subscriber playlist, “Other Voices.”
Transcript
New York’s Antarctica only put out two releases in their too-brief existence: 1998’s 23:03 EP and 1999’s 81:03 double album. But both releases left a considerable impact on both myself and my friends. The quintet’s music felt like it took the best aspects of our favorite genres — post-punk, emo, shoegaze, goth, and even ambient electronica — and blended them all together to perfection.
Not everyone was quite so sanguine about the band’s music, though. Pitchfork, for example, gave 81:03 a pretty scathing review — though that review no longer exists on their site. But my immediate circle of friends couldn’t get enough of the band’s sound in the early ‘00s, when we first discovered it. (If memory serves, I discovered Antarctica through Epitonic, an influential MP3 blog that was our gateway to a lot of great new music.)
On “Closetful of Churches,” Antarctica leans heavily into the gothier side of things, thanks to a solemn, elegiac pace and sorrowful guitar tones that evoke The Cure’s darkest moments on Faith and Pornography. Meanwhile, Chris Donohue and Eric Richter’s pained and urgent vocals imbue the song with a nicely emo urgency. (Richter, for what it’s worth, had previously played in the influential emo group Christie Front Drive.)
I was fortunate enough to see Antarctica perform while they were on tour with The Gloria Record, after seeing a poster for the concert by total happenstance. I suspect that most of the folks who crammed into Lincoln’s now-defunct Knickerbockers that night were there to see The Gloria Record. I have no doubt, however, that they were blown away by Antarctica’s performance, which was filled with shoegazer-y guitars and thumping dancehouse beats, especially during their performance of “Tektur the Water.”
Indeed, I think I even left halfway through The Gloria Record’s set, because I knew that it just wouldn’t compare with Antarctica’s performance. But not before embarrassing myself by striking up an awkward conversation with one of Antarctica’s members in which I might have compared their electronic sounds to Everything But the Girl. Which, to be clear, I fully intended as a compliment.
Sadly, Antarctica called it quits after 81:03, with the members moving on to other projects, like Ova Looven, Science Diet, Highness, and The 101. But for a brief, shining moment in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Antarctica made music that — for me and my friends, anyway — felt like it was made specifically for us.
If you enjoyed this episode, then check out my podcast archives.
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