Twenty years into their celebrated career, The Antlers drop another understated, melancholy, and deeply moving seventh long player.
Release date: October 10, 2025 | Transgressive | Instagram | Facebook | Bandcamp
In the storied annals of indie music, most major players have one record that’s remembered the most fondly as an influential landmark release. Pavement have their slacker classic Slanted and Enchanted, The Microphones have their lo-fi opus The Glow Pt. 2. Meanwhile, mainstream crossovers like Modest Mouse releasing The Moon & Antarctica at the turn of the century took indie rock to new commercial heights – quite literally so, licensing a song for a Nissan ad that quickly saw accusations of selling out being levied at them. It can be a conundrum for an artist working in the underground space to accept the offer to bring their ragged stylings to the surface while keeping their outsider reputation intact. Does one resign themselves to a career unspoiled by stardom, or does one take the money and run?
For The Antlers – originally founded by multi-instrumentalist Peter Silberman as a solo project in 2005 – this question seems never to have been an issue. After several self-recorded albums and EPs, Silberman brought on additional band members and collaborators, culminating in the release of Hospice in 2009. Another independent release, it sold out all physical copies in short time, leading New York-based label Frenchkiss Records to sign them and re-release the album in remastered form later that year. Hospice, with its narrative centering on the budding romance between – and eventual deterioration of – a cancer patient and her caretaker, was a sonically rich, emotionally devastating listen that deservedly won critical plaudits across the indie blogosphere.
After this point, The Antlers released several more well-received records through larger labels such as Anti- and Transgressive, although a bout of hearing loss beginning after 2014’s Familiars left Silberman unsure if he could continue making rock music of any kind. A seven-year hiatus from new material ensued, and the next Antlers release, 2021’s Green to Gold, represented a left-turn into more stripped-back, acoustic arrangements and hushed vocals – a result of surgery Silberman undertook to remove lesions from his vocal cords. Some were put off by the change, claiming the lack of musical intensity was not made up for by the warmer atmosphere and usage of field recordings. I, on the other hand, found it to be an engrossing listen; different, absolutely, but the more folky twang proved to be plenty enjoyable, if not as dynamically stimulating as a record like Hospice.
Which brings us, four years later, to Blight. As with Green to Gold, The Antlers are sounding more world-weary, the vocals more weathered, the sound barer than before. On the opening track “Consider the Source,” Silbermandirectly confronts his own denials:
‘Little choices and the way they spread,
Who must starve so we’d be fed?
I don’t think about what I can’t see,
But now that bird won’t stop staring at me…‘
This grappling with the idea of others suffering so we may live is nothing new, but the context in which it’s presented here – atop gently plinking piano, acoustic guitar strumming, and Michael Lerner’s cycling drumming – gives the message an organically haunting framework for Silberman to deliver it. His voice remains restrained throughout the song, but does reach higher during a couple key moments, provoking the listener to really ponder, ‘is it enough to add to cart with buyer’s remorse/is it too much to be undone, too late to change course?‘ Even at six minutes, “Consider the Source” never plods, but circles above, like the conscience on our shoulder, asking us to look a little closer, feel a little deeper. It’s a magical, thoughtful introduction.
“Carnage” is another emotionally charged, piano-driven piece with stark lyrics that are astonishing in their nonchalance:
‘Toad hops out of the briar,
And underneath my spinning tire,
There he remains emulsifier;
Accidental damage, casually maimed;
Incidental carnage, collateral pain…‘
The effect is startling, and the song’s well-earned distorted second half brings home the devastating contradiction of the human experience. Why do we accept the death of others, especially animals, with such indifference as a part of life? After all, if those very animals had a conscience, they certainly wouldn’t process that way, would they? Or would they view us humans under such an apathetic light? Silberman’s laying out of this question with grotesque imagery accompanying a genteel instrumental creates the very dissonance he’s clearly after, and most importantly, gets the listener thinking.
“Deactivate” uses technological metaphors to describe what sounds like the death of a friend. Whether this is someone on life support choosing to have the plug pulled, or else an even grimmer depiction of suicide, is unclear. However, the imagery is once again unflinching:
‘Either save this place, or opt out and dеactivate
Before your body’s obsolete, abandon ship, reserve your seat
But if you transfer incomplete, do not refresh, do not delete
Your treasury of memory, your tendency for reverie…‘
Unlike some of the other songs which build to a breaking point, “Deactivate” ends curiously with the sound of an airplane flying overhead and a running engine, accompanied by other ambient, percussive noises. It serves as another reminder of Silberman’s preoccupation with seeing real-world anxieties through the prism of the abstract, and how each viewing folds back onto and informs the other. This theme continues on the following “Calamity” with its description of how we leave behind our polluted world – ‘Mountains of metals and slime/hard to find by design/Rotting garden where crud and convenience combine/Over calamity we climb/Sure we’ll get this right next time‘ – and the tale of childhood innocence being upended by adult feelings like guilt and regret in “A Great Flood” – ‘We were only children, silly what we did then/scooping up the tadpoles, left them on the pavement/faultless in our innocence, charming in our ignorance/pissing in the reservoir, didn’t know the difference,’ all the while opining whether we should all wiped out by the titular great flood ‘to drown out our decisions.’ Dreary subject matter, to be sure, and a universally relatable weariness permeates these last few songs.
Incredibly enough, “They Lost All of Us” closes out Blight with a somber, solo piano piece accompanied by the swaying wind and sporadic, distant booming sounds. Somehow, this song wraps up the album’s themes without any words being said, although perhaps that’s the ultimate point. Taken at face value – as evidenced by the cover art depicting a dark sludge encroaching on an unspoiled beach – Blight is about humanity as a disease, a destructive force in need of vanquishing so that the world around us can heal itself. Perhaps Silberman’s own stints with health issues brought him to this mental state; maybe he’s just grown tired of seeing people at odds with each other and further dividing themselves up. In this regard, Blight stands as The Antlers‘ latter-day crowning achievement, a quiet admission of despondency brought on by our collective apathy. If this album serves as anything, it’s a warning, a plea for the nihilism to stop before there’s no going back. Here’s hoping we heed it.
