The Antlers on Facing Oblivion, Seeking Connection, and Hoping for a Better World

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it.

Peter Silberman of long-running indie-rock project the Antlers earns his two-timers jacket today when it comes to appearing on the newsletter; he first swung around these parts back in 2020 to talk about the gorgeous and autumnal Green and Gold. (I don't actually have a budget for jackets, but hey—if more people pay for the newsletter, I'll certainly ask Peter what size he wears.) Peter's got a fantastic new Antlers record coming out next week, 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. I was truly honored that Peter was amenable for round two of chatting, especially because I find him to be such a thoughtful and considerate mind, and our conversation was the best type—one you walk away from feeling as if you've learned something new about living in the process. Check it out:

The Antlers' music has taken on quite a few shapes at this point. Talk to me about the evolution of the project's sound.
I always want every record to be different than the last one—a record I've never made before. That's allowed me to really dig into the themes of different records, but sometimes that works against us with people not knowing what bucket to put us in stylistically—never quite folk enough, never quite rock enough. That's always been the creative goal, but there's been some drawbacks to that approach. I went into this record feeling like I wanted to make something that sounded more extreme and different than records I'd made before, but also touching on things I'd done before here and there.

But when I first started coming up with the ideas around the record, I really expected it to have this chopped-up feeling—to feel intense, dissonant, and disorienting. And I think it mostly delivered on that. I didn't go all the way out in some ways. I restrained some impulses in terms off more abstract leanings, and with this one I wanted the production to be supporting the vocals, the voice, and the message. The voice really needed to be out front, and the music was there existing to reinforce it, and this world behind it.

It's always been funny, trying to navigate the world that I'm in—the land of being thought of as an indie band. Different records have been a little easier to place in that category. But with this record, and with a record like Hospice, the music has been almost like an imaginary band—a vehicle for delivering a message, but not necessarily meant to sound real.

It's really interesting to hear you talk about the idea of pulling back on certain impulses and exercising a level of restraint. Talk to me more about notions of pulling back versus moments where you're pushing it further.
This was definitely much more of a "push it further" record. If there were any points where I showed restraint, it was more so out of not wanting to create a barrier, because I knew that the subject matter was going to be stuff that was kind of difficult to listen to. I wanted to make sure that the music was still inviting. I didn't want it to be sonically off-putting or abrasive—or, if it was, I wanted those moments to be pretty carefully considered and stand in contrast. That was really the challenge with this one: I wanted to go as far out as possible, to the extreme ends of the Earth with it—but I didn't want that to be the feeling of it from the first second of the record. I wanted it to draw somebody in with a couple of songs that felt a little more digestible, because I did want to take it to a much darker and heavier place than I have in a long time.

There are records for me that have made an impact on me, but because of how abrasive they are from like the very beginning, I'll sometimes not listen to them and keep them at a little bit of an arm's length. I'll say, "I'm not in a place right now where I want to listen to something that's so intense." That can be a barrier for a lot of people, so there's almost a bit of trickery going on. I wanted to trick listeners into thinking, "Ah, this is going to be a mellow record." The sequencing of the record is designed to be a bit of a Trojan horse: Yeah, there's a smooth, groovy beginning, but if you listen to what I'm talking about, It's actually stuff that is hard to confront.

You know, the record that this reminds me of the most in terms of your catalog is Familiars.
Oh, interesting. Familiars definitely had a lot of that darkness—especially "Doppelganger," which is the darkest song on that record. That's a mode that I'm always wanting to find a place for, and it requires the right subject matter. I went into this record really wanting to make something that was scary, and "Doppelganger" because it goes from darkness into this rebirth, spiritual positivity, and equanimity. Impermanence also had some darkness to it and ends on a very dark note as well. That one has a lot of contrast between this blissful piece and this creeping darkness that returns at the end.

But this record feels just dark the whole way through. It's got a lot of prettiness to it, but the message is dark throughout. There's one moment in the record that feels like this ascent to heaven, but it's followed by this end-of-all-things sound. I think some of that comes from David Lynch and the way he'd juxtapose different moods
and take these left turns from something silly or heartfelt to complete evil. Something about all of those existing in the same space to me feels very real.

I'd love to hear you talk more about what you're lyrically working through on this record.
I'm trying to draw a throughline from passive behaviors in modern capitalist consumerist culture—ordering something off of Amazon and getting next-day shipping—and the distance that we're kept from what that really means, and what makes that happen. The throughline was that little things add up to make a big difference. It's not just about consumerism, but I think it's a factor in trying to explore how all of these things are connected and the idea of the kind of convenience that we've all gotten used to—what the real ramifications of that are when it's so widespread. The entire world is now existing to support that convenience, and at what expense? I'm drawing that out to the most drastic consequences. The whole thing is a bit of an anxiety spiral of when you start thinking about these actions—these behaviors and the ramifications, imagining how it all accumulates considering where it could all be. And the outcome is not good.

One quote that stood out to me in the bio was with regards to your upstate trappings, and how you felt like you were wandering around an abandoned planet. When I hear somebody say something like that, I think about how, even after COVID, there's still this lingering feeling of isolation that you can have, even when you're very much surrounded by people, which is fascinating and disturbing. Talk to me about the abandoned planet aspect of it all, and how those feelings emerge in your general day-to-day life.
Part of making this record, and working on a lot of records for me, is that I work on them in my head a lot. It's me sorting these things out in my head, usually while I'm just walking around. Luckily, I live in a place where I can just walk around a big field for a few hours. I mean, maybe I look a little insane while doing it, but no one's like, "What the hell is that guy doing?"

I've found myself in a situation in my life where the place I live is a little less densely populated, so there are some environments that I can go to where I can really just get lost in my imagination while I'm working on projects—and that helps me write the stories that are on this record. Thinking about an apocalyptic scenario and what that would look like, it helps to be in a place where there's nobody around. It was just eerily quiet, and it helped me place myself in this story.

I identify with what you're talking about, this isolation feeling. Sometimes it's a mode that I get into, where I'll be driving along a long row of strip malls, or when I was on tour last year driving through a part of the deep south and just seeing oil refineries and more strip malls. It's hard not to get into this mindset of the planet just being doomed. I admit that it can be all-consuming sometimes, and I don't want it to be true. But a lot of this record came out of that mindset and not really finding a lot of reassurance that it wasn't the case.

The best that I feel is when I'm just not thinking about it—when I can distract myself from it, or I can go for a walk in the woods and be in a place that feels protected. But the truth is that contamination in various forms is so widespread that it's a bit of a delusion to believe that everything is okay—that protected spaces are truly separate from industrialization and civilization. They give the illusion of preservation. That's what the record is a little bit about—this creeping contamination of all things, and what that feels like.

What I wanted to try and accomplish with this record is to not have it be this damning criticism of society and of people, but to just speak to how it feels to live in it—to speak to this feeling of hopelessness and frustration of trying to be more ethical in my own consumption. In my own way, I dispose of things that are cycled and try to reduce my carbon footprint. This feeling that I'm doing the right thing, it's for my conscience—but the deck is so stacked against us, and the people who are actually in a position to do anything about it are moving in the opposite direction.

I hadn't come across music that spoke to that. It may be out there, and that may just speak to my own lack of awareness of what people are making right now. But I didn't find it for myself, so I wanted to speak to that, because I don't know what to do with that feeling, and I don't think I'm alone in feeling that way—and most of us can't feel that way all the time, because we have to get on with our lives. We have to work, and we want to be with our families and our friends and not be miserable about the world all the time. But there's a dissonance going on, where we all have to put this out of mind in order to move on. But it doesn't mean it's not still happening.

You're absolutely right about that dissonance of existing. The amount of compartmentalization you have to do if you're somebody who cares about human life, at this point, is extraordinary—and I think there are plenty of people who very clearly don't care, which is also disturbing and disheartening and frustrating on a number of levels. I also feel like I've watched people succumb in various ways to a sort of doomer hopelessness. As somebody who's kind of always felt this way about the world, there's a bit of bit of, "Welcome to the party." But at the same time, it's been genuinely sad to see people disappear um into this sense of the true nature of everything. How do you personally manage striking a balance?
Truthfully, I haven't found a good way to manage it. In a weird way, I'm grateful for whatever mechanism it is in my brain that allows me to not think about it all the time. But this awareness that you develop can be really hard to turn off. I think there are things you can do for your conscience that maybe help in terms of your own feelings of not contributing to the problem quite so much. But I don't have a good answer for that, unfortunately. Maybe it's a matter of attention, and how much you let the news influence how you feel on a day-to-day basis. There isn't an easy way to navigate that. But putting boundaries on it is important, so that you can have your attention on the people that you care about and the aspects of your life that are important to you.

There's also this economy that's dependent on fueling your shock and rage about these things. In this weird way, these people who are contributing to the downfall of society are also profiting from us getting enraged about it. They're also profiting by us being activists online about it, which is twisted. This was what I was trying to work through while making this record—this feeling that we're all trapped and everything we do fuels our own demise. I was hoping that, by working through the record, I'd work through my feelings about it and find some solace, and I actually came out of it feeling worse.

In the past 15 years, indie hasn't been super well-known for its ability to talk about these things. Obviously, there's been exceptions, and the tide has shifted a bit as well. But when you look at the 2010s specifically, it was relatively rare.
But you've got artists like ANOHNI, who are talking about very difficult things very directly. I saw her at Big Ears this year, and it was so moving. What she was saying in between songs, you could feel in the crowd. People were energized by hearing someone give a voice to the things that they were worried, scared, and frustrated about. In the moment, it felt like something that was giving a bit of hope—that other people feel this way. A lot of people feel this way.

Some sort of solidarity, even if we don't know what the way forward is—that was why I made the record in the first place. I was coming up against this period of doubt where I was wondering, "What's even the point of writing a song right now, given everything that's going on?" What's the point of writing a song about my personal life, or my inner monologue as it relates to getting older or whatever I would write about right now? Certainly, there is a point, because it's connecting to people, and connection makes people feel more alive. But what was hugely motivating for me this time around was to try and talk about something that I suspected a lot of people felt but didn't know how to put into words to—and hoping that somebody would hear it and it'd get them thinking about it.

I don't know. I have a very specific skill set here, and my hope is that somebody else who is hearing this possesses their own skill set, and they might hear some of these problems laid out in a way that they haven't heard before, and that will get them thinking about what can be done, and maybe they'll come up with some good ideas. It's not to pass the buck, exactly—but it has to be collaborative, you know, our survival.

Let's talk about the act of being online right now as an artist, and as a person. I've definitely spoken to plenty of artists recently who are increasingly done with the social media game.
Oh, sure—well, you can understand why people don't want to be online when it's a horror show. But I began my career self-promoting. I was the one emailing all these music blogs back in the day—probably hundreds of them back in the kind of mid-2000s—sending them everything I was working on. We'd get a couple bites here and there, and it was depressing. At the time, I was like, "God, I wish someone could do this for me."

But when it started to catch on as we were self-releasing Hospice, it was really rewarding to feel like this groundwork was finally paying off—not that success in music is necessarily earned, because I think there's a lot of luck and timing that goes into it. But after things took off, I was relieved to be able to hand off that sort of thing to publicists and management.

It took me a little while to realize that it's still important to be that person who's promoting your own stuff. These days, I've really started to embrace it more, even though we're working with publicists on this record. I've returned to realizing that it is meaningful to be reaching out to people directly, and to also be promoting what you're doing yourself so that it doesn't feel like this is an account run by management, and the person themselves is unreachable. Unless you're ultra-famous, I think artists do need to be the ones who are communicating directly with their audiences—and, for me, I don't mind being the one who's doing that stuff. It's time-consuming, and it can be tiring, but in principle, I don't mind it.

I think what's frustrating about it for a lot of artists right now is that they're putting a lot of time into it, and the algorithmic nature of these platforms is just basically burying all their hard work, so they can't even communicate with their own audiences. They're holding these audiences hostage unless they pay to make these things visible. So that frustration is pretty justified, and that's why I have been increasingly turning my attention towards the newsletter. Weirdly, email is still an effective way to reach your audience. I have no idea how that's still relevant, but it seems to be, and it can allow for a more meaningful connection.

I think that music media is struggling. Music journalists are flooded by press releases from publicists, and personal connections are just still meaningful if you can make them. It means casting a wide net and getting comfortable with being ignored. But I think, in some ways, every non-famous, non-millionaire musician is sort of in the same boat. We all have to hustle and be the ones who are representing ourselves.

What I come up against is that I'm a pretty private person. I don't like sharing my life on social media. I've just become very protective of my life and my family, and it's made me very cautious about how much of myself I put out there—which works against the need to let people get to know you and be a transparent influencer, where people feel like they know you and how your brain works. "Here's my baby, here's my wife, here's what I had for breakfast"—all those clichés. I'm still trying to thread the needle of how I want to convey what the work is about and who I am as an artist, and maybe a little bit of who I am as a person. But there's a lot of my life that's just important for me to reserve for the people that are close to me—because, to me, that's intimacy, and I prefer to convey that through art and the things that I say around it.

I'm just cautious of parasocial relationships and offering too much of myself to get you to listen to my music. I'm not so naive to think that the music can just speak for itself, and that I can just be a shadowy figure where you have no idea who I am. But every artist has to find how much of themselves they're comfortable sharing with strangers. As far as being entitled to an audience, success, and attention—everyone's got to work for it, and what sucks about it is that a lot of us are working for that, but we're coming up against adversarial platforms that are interested in promoting a certain type of online individual. For the rest of us, it's important to develop loyalty and respect with your audience. Generosity with boundaries, I guess.

I do think there has been this danger of people just assuming that you can be some goofy-ass influencer pretending to be a musician and that other people will just eat it up because they're idiots. There are plenty of idiots out there, but I think people generally also don't want to feel like they're being pandered to. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, though.
No, I think you're right. People can tell when you're talking to them impersonally—and, I mean, it's hard to talk to a group with a personal touch. How can you make everybody in the audience feel like you're talking to them without being hyper-personal? It's tricky. It takes practice. It takes listening to feedback, and I think everyone's doing their best to figure it out.