The Antlers Release "Blight"; Song Cycle About Climate Crisis; First Album in Four Years

THE ANTLERS RELEASE THEIR IRIDESCENT ODYSSEY, BLIGHT -  PURCHASE/STREAM FIRST NEW STUDIO ALBUM IN OVER FOUR YEARS INCLUDES SWEEPING, TEXTURED TITLE TRACK OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO PREMIERES TODAY – WATCH ALBUM RELEASE SHOW SET FOR NYC’S LE POISSON ROUGE ON OCTOBER 22 – LIMITED TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE

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The Antlers – the much beloved band and recording project of singer-songwriter-guitarist- producer Peter Silberman – have released their eagerly awaited new album, Blight. The follow-up to 2021’s rustic, folk-tinged Green to Gold, Blight asks many questions without offering easy answers. Over the course of nine new songs, the Antlers’ founder and primary songwriter Silberman reckons with our passively destructive tendencies – absentminded pollution, unwitting wastefulness, and the inadvertent devastation of the natural world. Despite its heavy themes, Blight is far from a punishing listen. With its adventurous arrangements and persistent momentum, it plays more like an iridescent odyssey. The album features the title track, punctuated by a stuttering pulse, with lyrics that respond to modern society’s compulsion to consume – likening it to ravenous moths. It finds its place in an album that asks us to examine the ways we interact with the natural world and reckon with the reciprocity of this relationship. A lyric video is streaming now on YouTube. “‘Blight’ is a song addressing consumption through two lenses,” says Silberman. “The first zooms in on my inner tension around convenience, and the bargaining done to justify the environmental cost. I tell myself, ‘I do the best that I can.’ The second zooms out on an insect infestation devouring everything in its path. Maybe these insatiable swarms are simply doing the best they can, too.”   WATCH “BLIGHT” OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO PURCHASE/STREAM BLIGHT Blight is a song cycle that feels like science fiction, sounding as if it were delivered from the near future. The album is a work of meticulous world-building, teeming with ear candy and surprising stylistic shifts. While many songs begin with sparse elements— a fingerpicked guitar, hypnotic organ stabs, or a nimble piano melody — they rarely remain tethered to their foundations. They often reimagine themselves partway through, shifting mid-track from gentle ballad to throbbing electronica, only to land somewhere entirely different by the end. Blight was recorded over the course of a few years, with the lion’s share tracked and produced in Silberman’s home studio in upstate New York, a compact outbuilding perched at the edge of a neighbor’s sprawling hayfield.   “So much of the record was conceived while walking these massive fields,” Silberman says. “I felt like I was wandering around an abandoned planet.” Blight was first unveiled this summer with the volatile “Carnage.” A roadkill murder ballad that lurks in a brooding crawl before erupting into a full-band maelstrom, the track sees Silberman’s roaring Telecaster swarming around longtime collaborator Michael Lerner’s cacophonous drumming, harnessing an energy the band has long conjured in a live setting but until now never put to tape. “Carnage” was met by praise and attention from publications around the world, including Pitchfork, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, NME, and NPR. Following “Carnage” was the release of the second single, “Something in the Air.” “Something in the Air” is a chilling song that illustrates an ambiguous, unnamed threat, calling to mind any number of distressing headlines, and containing the album’s most explosive moment – a blown-out orchestral jump-scare underscoring the implied force majeure.  LISTEN TO “CARNAGE” WATCH “CARNAGE” OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO LISTEN TO “SOMETHING IN THE AIR” WATCH “SOMETHING IN THE AIR” VISUALIZER PRAISE FOR BLIGHT: “The best thing they've done since Hospice." – NPR "It is everything you’ve ever loved about the Antlers: cinematic, enveloping, ineffable...Holy shit, man. Is this what it feels like to undergo a spiritual reckoning?" – Paste "...its stripped-down arrangement works as a pure, uncut distillation of the Antlers’ essence. If you ever loved these guys (or peers like Grizzly Bear), you ought to let this one stare you in the eyes..." – Stereogum “Peter's got a fantastic new Antlers record coming out…Blight; it's at once strange new territory for him while carrying echoes of familiarity in regards to his catalog, which continues to be one of the most sonically impressive collections of music coming out of indie in the last 20 years, hand on the Bible.” – LARRY FITZMAURICE’S LAST DONUT OF THE NIGHT  “Revitalised east coast pair make a graceful return... This first album in four years achieves a captivatingly soft-sung beauty.” – UNCUT – 8/10   “Blight is powerful... Peter Silberman registers his uneasiness about our mutual destiny.” – MOJO “Poised and exquisitely crafted, Blight’s meditations on the effects of human actions are delivered with a gentle sincerity… ‘Will we be forgiven?’ asked Silberman, giving modern anxieties a hauntingly beautiful voice.” – RECORD COLLECTOR – 4/5 # # # The Antlers will celebrate Blight with an in-store performance and album signing at Everything Nice in Ellenville, NY, on October 18, and a special album release show set for Wednesday, October 22, at New York City’s Le Poisson Rouge; limited tickets are still available. Next year will see the band embark on a series of EU/UK headline dates, beginning March 5, 2026, at Dolan’s in Limerick, Ireland, and then visiting Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels. Tickets on sale now—for more information, please visit antlersmusic.com/shows.   THE ANTLERS - LIVE 2025-2026   OCTOBER 2025 18 - Ellenville, NY - Everything Nice [In-Store] 22 – New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge   MARCH 2026 5 – Limerick, IE – Dolan’s 6 – Dublin, IE – Whelan’s 8 – Glasgow, UK - King Tut’s 9 – Manchester, UK – YES 10 – Bristol, UK – Strange Brew 11 – London, UK – EartH Theatre 13 – Paris, FR – Petit Bain 14 – Amsterdam, NL – Zonnehuis 15 – Brussels, BE – AB Club   # # #