There’s a thread of trauma running through most of the Antlers’ albums, and their latest is no exception. Yet while the band’s earlier work, particularly 2009’s Hospice and 2011’s Burst Apart, explored the psychological toll of distress on an individual level, Blight takes a more global approach. Singer, guitarist, and songwriter Peter Silberman here mourns the degradation of the natural world through waste, pollution, and sheer apathy. There are plenty of ways that theme could go wrong, but Silberman manages not to sound doctrinaire or heavy-handed on these nine songs, even as he quietly excoriates a culture of convenience that has chosen to overlook the consequences of next-day delivery and cheap mass-production. Mostly, he sounds sad and disappointed at the myriad thoughtless ways that we are collectively destroying the ecology.
Silberman doesn’t spare himself—in fact, he’s most often examining his own culpability through lyrics that are piercing and direct. “What becomes of what I throw away? Broken cord, takeout tray,” he sings on album opener “Consider the Source.” “Leaky battery and shattered screen, spilling ink I can’t clean.” He’s singing in a ghostly whisper over mournful piano chords, but the sentiment lands with thunderous force. That’s true throughout Blight. On “Carnage,” Silberman tallies the damage that human shaping of the world around us has done to animals, including birds smacking into glass windows and snakes losing their heads to lawnmowers. Later, on “Calamity,” he wonders about the legacy we’re leaving for the future generations that will have to reckon with the trash we are amassing across a poisoned landscape.
Musically, the songs on Blight are of a piece with the Antlers’ general approach over the years. The arrangements are subtle and understated, and they often build slowly as they expand into space that allows the music plenty of room to reverberate, even when it’s quiet. On “Consider the Source,” brushed drums from Michael Lerner lend just a hint of propulsion to the song as they join Silberman’s piano and vocals that increase in volume and anguish. “Carnage” introduces electronics alongside piano, creating a sense of coiled tension that mounts until it ruptures into a noisy whorl of guitar and drums. Silberman is rarely in a hurry here, and he lets the songs unfold at a measured pace. That’s particularly true on “Deactivate,” which stretches past seven minutes. The track feels like a communiqué from an apocalyptic near future, and he scarcely pauses to breathe as he murmurs dire descriptions of streets littered with “deflated bodies / empty meat” and still-leashed dogs running loose. The song begins with a repeating pattern on a fingerpicked acoustic guitar and textural synths. Midway through, the synth parts become kaleidoscopic and wash over Silberman’s wordless vocals. It feels like a redemptive moment on an album with precious few of them.
Redemption isn’t what Silberman is after on Blight—it’s too pat, too exculpatory, and the Antlers frontman isn’t ready to let anyone off the hook so easily. These songs are more of a subdued wake-up call, an attempt to draw attention to what strikes Silberman, reasonably, as an existential issue. Even when he does dangle the idea of salvation, he does so as a skeptic. “Of this, I’m uncertain,” he sings on “A Great Flood,” a minimalist track with only voice and muted keyboards. “Will we be forgiven? Should there come a great flood to drown out our decisions?” They are the last lines he sings on Blight, and the song slides seamlessly into “They Lost All of Us,” the instrumental track that closes the album. A sad piano figure moves steadily through what sounds like waves rolling onto a beach, as if to wash away what remains of us when we have gone.
Eric R. Danton has been contributing to Paste since 2013. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and Pitchfork, among other publications. He writes Freak Scene, a newsletter about music in Western Massachusetts and Connecticut, and is working on a book about American protest culture.
