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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. But 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 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,” he says. “I felt like I was wandering around an abandoned planet.” And in a sense, Blight does feel 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.