In March of 2009, Brooklyn indie rock trio the Antlers released Hospice, their grand and ambitious and moving third album. Hospice was a concept album about a romance between a hospice worker and a patient dying of bone cancer, and it remains the Antlers’ best-known, best-loved album. This year, the Antlers will celebrate that anniversary by reissuing Hospice on vinyl and by heading out on a tour of smallish venues in North America and Europe, where they’ll perform Hospice in full every night.

This tour and reissue are coming after a period of inactivity for the Antlers. They released Familiars, their last album, in 2014, and they haven’t toured in four years. Last year, they on Twitter, frontman Peter Silberman told a fan, on Twitter, that the band’s hiatus would last “probably forever…sorry dude.”

Well, they haven’t broken up after all. But multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci has apparently parted ways with the band. Cicci won’t be touring with them; instead, they’ll be a duo, and frontman Peter Silberman promises that the shows will feature “some old friends and guests.”

Here’s what Silberman writes about the tour:

We’re reissuing Hospice on March 8th, 2019, in honor of its tenth anniversary. It will be newly pressed on double white vinyl, with deluxe artwork and packaging courtesy of the album’s original artist, Zan Goodman.

We’ll be playing a limited number of small acoustic shows to celebrate, too. But it will be a bit different this time as the core band now consists of myself and drummer Michael Lerner — longtime multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci is no longer with the band.

Though we’ve pared down for the time being, these shows will feature some old friends and guests, and together we’ll perform Hospice in its entirety.

I hope you’ll join us for these special evenings. I’m truly looking forward to revisiting these old songs in a new light and seeing your friendly faces again. Your patience and support means so much.

TOUR DATES:
3/17 – Seattle, WA @ Fremont Abbey Arts Center
3/20 – Portland, OR @ The Old Church
3/22 – San Francisco @ Great American Music Hall
3/23 – Los Angeles, CA @ Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever
3/26 – Boston, MA @ The Sinclair
3/27 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Café Live
3/28 – Washington, DC @ Miracle Theatre
3/30-31 – Brooklyn, NY @ First Unitarian Congregational Society
4/19 – Leeds, UK @ Belgrave Music Hall
4/20 – Manchester, UK @ The Dancehouse Theatre
4/21 – Glasgow, UK @ St Luke’s
4/23 – London, UK @ Union Chapel
4/25 – Leuven, Belgium @ Het Depot
4/26 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Vondelkerk
4/28 – Copenhagen, Denmark @ Hotel Cecil
4/30 – Dublin, Ireland @ The Sugar Club

The Hospice reissue is out 3/8 on Frenchkiss/Transgressive.