Lost And Sound

Peter Silberman – The Antlers

• Paul Hanford • Episode 186

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What does it mean to make music that faces the harshest truths while still holding beauty and hope? Peter Silberman of The Antlers seems to have made contemplating this question a major theme of his life's work, crafting albums that dive deep into emotional and existential territories without losing sight of sonic beauty.

On the eve of releasing The Antlers' seventh album "Blights," Silberman spoke with me about how environmental concerns and our accelerating consumption have shaped his newest work. Rather than creating music that points fingers, Silberman examines his own complicity in environmental harm. "I hadn't yet heard music that acknowledges this unwilling participation in these problems and the guilt around it," he shares, noting how our modern world makes it "almost impossible not to be part of the problem.”

We spoke about The Antlers' twenty-year history, from Silberman's early days navigating Brooklyn's music scene to the creation of "Hospice," often described as one of the saddest albums ever made. There’s something method-like about how he maintains emotional authenticity when performing older material, likening it to "inhabiting a character or persona... playing myself at a different age." Throughout, Silberman's thoughtful approach to music-making shines through, particularly in his deliberate use of quietness and space as counterpoints to our increasingly noisy, distracted world.

Follow The Antlers on Instagram:
👉 The Antlers Instagram

Buy / Listen to Blight on Bandcamp:
👉 Blight on Bandcamp

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Want to go deeper? Grab a copy of my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.

And if you’re curious about Cold War-era subversion, check out my BBC documentary The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock Across The Berlin Wall on the BBC World Service.

You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

SPEAKER_00:

What does it mean to make music that faces the harshest truths but still holds beauty and hope? This is something that my guest on the show today has made a fine art out of, Peter Silberman from The Antlers. Hello, welcome to Lost and Sound, the show that goes deep with artists shaping music and culture from the underground up. But before we get going, Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica. For over 60 years, this family-run company has making the kind of gear that helps artists, DJs, and listeners alike really hear the details. Headphones, microphones, turntables and cartridges. Studio quality, beautifully engineered and designed and built on the belief that great sound should be for everyone. So wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnica.com to check out all of their range of stuff. Right, I hope you're having a really lovely one, whatever you're doing right now. And yeah, this is Lost in Sound. I'm Paul Hamford. I'm your host. I'm an author, a broadcaster, and a lecturer. And each week on the show I have conversations with artists who work outside the box about music, creativity, and about how they're navigating life through their art. So whether you're new here or you've been listening for a while, it's great to have you along. And I hope whatever you're up to today, whatever you're doing whilst you're listening to this, you're having a really fucking great one. Okay, so a few weeks ago on the show, uh, when I was talking with my guest at the time, Deventure Banhart, he actually turned the interview chair on me multiple times during the conversation. But at one point when he did this, he asked me what song made me cry the most. And go back and check the whole thing out if you haven't checked it out already and that interests you. But the first thing that came to my head was weirdly the hustle. Well, I thought of a couple of things, but one of them was the Beatles in my life. The other thing was the hustle, the old disco track by the Van McCoys, which I know is not necessarily perhaps a go-to cry song, but there's just something about the melody line of that that for me just sounds so sort of like bittersweet and evocative of something. But if we're talking about an artist that has built up a collection of work that is just not afraid to be sad, then I present to you today's guest, Peter Silberman, singer and songwriter of The Antlers. I think for a lot of people, the big entry point into the world of The Antlers came in 2009 with their album Hospice, which is just fucking sublime. Um I discovered it sometime after 2009, but it's it's a fucking beautiful record, and I don't want to contribute to the pigeonholing of an artist's work as being defined by one thing, in this context, sadness. Um, I mean, there's a whole rich world of stuff going on with any piece of music by Peter Silberman, whether that's with his solo stuff or The Antlers. But for the context of what I'm saying now, Hospice has been called one of the saddest records ever made. And it's also kind of a concept album. So over the years, through albums like Burst Apart and Green to Gold, there's this really strong sense of using texture, often quietness and space to build up these beautiful, like totally contained sonic worlds that from time to time burst into moments of like loudness and expansiveness. Uh, Pete has also released solo work, as I mentioned, most notably Impermanence in 2017. Um, but we had this conversation because the Seventh Antlers album is coming out on October the 7th. It's called Blights, and it deals with themes that connect to the environment and our accelerating consumption and what it means to us and what it means to him. And we talk a lot about this, and I think what he talks about points to a way that artists are using their practice to make music to process the harsh realities of the world right now. This seems to be a bit of a theme on the podcast this year, and it's something I'm really interested in pursuing is like how artists are in their work, how how how what is going on externally in the world is being processed by people, uh, particularly by people making brilliant music. He's a very likable and thoughtful guy. I think you're gonna really enjoy this conversation. Um, housekeeping time. If you like the show and you haven't already, please do give it a subscribe. Give the show a rating and a review on the platform of your choice. It really, really, really does help. So, yeah, we had this chat on September 25th, 2025. And this is what happened when I met Peter Silberman of The Antlers. Hey, Peter, how are you doing? You're right.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh yeah, I'm good. Thanks. How are you, Paul?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm really good, thank you. I'm really where where about see you in uh upstate New York? Uh yeah, I am. I'm uh I'm in my home studio right now. It's got some very healthy looking plants in the background.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they're survivors for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Excellent. I'm not very good with plants. I'm one of these people I'd do my best, but they just seem to die. I'm not sure how or why. Do you have any secrets?

SPEAKER_01:

Um I think there's like a few plants that are a little more forgiving of negligence, and those seem to be the ones that that do best in our house. So like these pothos here, like they're pretty, they're pretty hardy. They just like need some water and some sun. And they usually tell you when they when they need one of those things, they'll kind of close up and look kind of sad, but then they'll come back once you once you give them some water.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Okay, yes. I guess for my fingers, I just probably don't notice enough. Well, thanks so much for chatting with me today. I mean, it's been like roughly two decades since the antlers kind of formed, and I know you were doing stuff beforehand, but with the release of the new album coming up, does that kind of cause a time for you to like reflect on the past and and sort of question or have any questions for like how you got here or why?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, I think it is crazy to me that this project has been going for for about, yeah, like you said, two decades now. And I think if I if I think about it too much, it's quite disorienting. But I think at the onset of starting to make a record, I I do usually think to myself, like, what record have I not made yet? And which one have I been wanting to make? And um I I think Blight very much fits into that question. Um, because I I do feel like it's it's definitely a record I've never made before, at least thematically. Um I I think it kind of it does borrow some ideas from from the past records and feels connected to them somehow. But yeah, I don't know. I guess I guess you do this long enough and you write enough songs that you you start to wonder what where is this going and and what is left to say and what is new to say and what do I want to do with this with this opportunity to to make music and have people hear it? What do I what do I want to put out there into the world?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean I I want to dig in a little bit to the some of the themes of this album and what you were exploring with that, but it's really interesting what you were saying about like what album do you want to make next, what project do you want to do next, you know, and how much of that, I mean, I know that life plays such an intrinsic role in the creative process and in terms of what actually comes out at the other end, you know, and I think in quote for most artists I speak to, and I know for myself, it is just like more of a continual cycle of things. But I mean, are there points where you make conscious decisions when you're starting a project that you really want to go for a certain thing, or do you take a different approach to those starting points?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, sometimes sometimes it does start out with a specific idea, and it doesn't necessarily stay with that idea. Sometimes it does uh turn into something else just through the process of writing and exploring that. Um and then sometimes it's a little more intuitive and it it kind of arises more out of the practice of of playing and writing, and you start to discover what it is you have to say. You know, I think there've been times where I've been starting to work on music and not having an idea in mind, at least thematically. Um, maybe just starting with a musical idea. And that can sometimes be the hardest place to work from where you know I'm wanting to write lyrics to a musical idea that I have, but I'm I from from the start, I don't really know what point I'm trying to get across or what what the subject is at all. And so sometimes that becomes a bit more of like an intuitive or stream of consciousness process to to discover what might be in there, and then maybe those first attempts are what the song ends up being about, but a lot of the time it's more of like a path that leads to something else, and then you know, maybe a ways into the process you you say, Oh, this is actually about something else and not what I thought it was.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you're kind of finding things out as you go through it, I imagine.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, and that's I mean, I think a lot of what um for for me, a lot of what these albums have been and these songs have been, is it's you're kind of getting a window into me figuring something out and to my train of thought over a long period of time and how how that evolution of of thinking happens.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and and so with with Blights coming out, which I love by the way, it's um what what was there like a particular starting point for that, or maybe even like a particular mood you were in when that began?

SPEAKER_01:

I think the the starting point for for Blight was the song A Great Flood, which is towards the end of the record. Um and I'm it's it's a little hard. It was a a couple years ago now that that idea came about. Um it started as a very simple chord progression and kind of a recording experiment with a um a piece of gear that allows you to harmonize uh like basically harmonize your voice, like a synthetic version of your voice with yourself as you're singing. And I I had just been playing around with it and decided to experiment with this almost like uh this kind of hymn gospel kind of sound. I think I was at the time I was thinking of The Last Low record and might have even been thinking of like Image and Heap, like from back in the day. Like I there was that there was that song that had a big moment like God, like 20 years ago. It was in a very like pivotal moment of that show, the OC. And I think those things were just like rolling around in my head because those are my associations with this style of harmonization. And um and I think the first verse of it, the first and last verse of it were the only thing that I had written, and I was just singing them on loop and listening to them, and and I I wasn't exactly sure where they where they came from, but it felt to be something kind of rapture-esque. Um something to do with a with a rapture and um and and singing about it in this sort of questioning space. And like I said, I wasn't sure exactly where it came from. I had been thinking a lot about environmental issues, and maybe those those had been in there subconsciously, but it wasn't until I sat with it for a little while just listening to it on loop that I I thought this might be the beginning of something. This might be the first thread to pull on of a record about uh bigger issues.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, because it's not the first time you've approached something kind of thematically whole, I'd say, you know, like I mean, obviously, hospice is a very notable example of that. I mean, when it comes to sort of fight this line, some people sort of use words like concept album. I don't know how you feel about that as a term. How conscious are you once you have something to kind of keep it locked in within these themes? You know, do you ever get like an idea and you go like, oh fuck, that's got nothing to do with this, but it feels great.

SPEAKER_01:

Sometimes, yeah. Um, I think this is the first the first record I've made in a long time where it felt like everything I was writing fit into this theme that I had. Um, and in the past I've definitely had records that I was sort of thinking of as a concept record, but then I would include a song that sort of had nothing to do with it, and I would find a way to kind of force it in there so that it could feel like it was a part of the whole, and I would create like a an elaborate explanation for myself as to why it fit in. And I think this record was a little different because once I had the kind of first seeds of the idea of the concept, it opened up this whole world of writing for me where I I felt like there were the almost too many aspects of this that I wanted to write about. And it wasn't clear right away how they would all fit together and in what order in order to find the narrative arc, but it revealed itself over time. It just it spent it took a lot of time thinking it through. And a lot of that process happens just kind of while walking around and and working on things in my head, and and um and then things would click into place, and I would, I would say this this makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, because you mentioned I I I I heard that you mentioned that you did a lot of walking, um solitary walking around like in your neighborhood and in like countryside. Um, what kind of effect does that? Because I mean it's interesting because the album has themes that do connect with nature and destruction and the kind of auto-acceleration of of like this kind of uh situation that we're with we find ourselves in on an on a capitalist level. You know, what drawing on the nature, what did what did that give you?

SPEAKER_01:

Um I think it's it's sort of the other side of the the coin of walking around a beautiful place and thinking to yourself, God, isn't this beautiful? The flip side of that is it's not a given that this is going to remain. There is there are so many factors at play that are threatening this, whether it's development or environmental destruction or extreme weather, pollution, contamination, um blight ill illness, you know, like illness in plants that is maybe seems as if it's part of a natural life cycle, but is actually a result of things that we're doing to the environment, just not a direct result. Um so I think it had me thinking about that darker possibility and and then beginning to see it all around and needing to do something with that awareness.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, this is an interesting question, actually, or it's an interesting sort of topic. I think um I was speaking with David Longstraff several months back, whose also most recent work uh has an environmental concern uh to it. I mean, we're it might sound like a really obvious thing to say, but where do you think that there is this sort of sense of urgency to talk about these things, you know, in in music right now?

SPEAKER_01:

I can't speak for him, um, but for myself, I think it comes out of a desperation to see something change and feeling frustrated with the pace at which that's happening or not happening.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, and asking myself the question of what can I do to help beyond just living sustainably and and looking at the the reach I have with my project and and the platform I have, and and is there anything that I can do with that? And I I think there are a lot of people who aren't making art that is specifically uh ecological or environmental, but they're using their platform to raise money for these causes, which is which is great. And that's part of it too, and that's that's a really important part of it. I think as an artist, the the impetus that I had in addition to that was trying to speak about these things in a way that might spread awareness and get people thinking differently about them. Because I think that a lot of the conversations around it are finger pointing and they're coming from a place of frustration and anger, and I I feel all those things too, and I do I do plenty of finger pointing in my in my head and as I talk to people about it, and you know, it's um that is meaningful and important, but I think what I hadn't yet heard was I guess music that acknowledges this sort of unwilling participation in all of these problems and the guilt around it. And I think it's out there, I just haven't encountered it myself. Um, and that was what signaled to me that this was how I wanted to write about it, not from a place of of condemnation, but I guess examining my own feelings around it, my own my own guilt around my own lack of sustainability and trying to come to terms with my own hypocrisy about this stuff. Because you know, I I I think the world we live in now makes it almost impossible not to be part of the problem and need to find some simultaneously need to find and take accountability for it and also have compassion for ourselves that we are we are kind of trapped in this system that forces us to destroy our world.

SPEAKER_00:

And I think I think um making art is a really good way of like questioning these things internally rather than like you say, finger pointing, which you know we all do. But I think when it comes to the art, that's that's the kind of perhaps the the point where you can work things out yourself in terms of at least questions, if not answers, you know, and and art is so good for just shaping questions. Um, I'm very suspicious of art that has answers.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And I mean, I think sonically as well, there's a there's it there's a real through line with most of the work. And one of the things that always draws me to what you do is the way that quietness and space is played with. Um, that I mean, what does that mean for you? You know, that there's such a sort of dynamic range to a lot of the music, but I always feel like there's this anchor in terms of like my subjective experience of listening, of like these periods of like almost nothing or sounds just very I don't mean that in a no, I totally know what you mean what you mean.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I take that as a compliment. Um yeah, I think um I think there's something there can be something really unsettling about quiet and about space, especially these days. I think society and technology have encouraged us to fill up all of the empty space in our lives, whether that is you know sonically by you, you know, something uh a platform like Spotify encouraging us to keep keep background music playing at all times, or just in general, the way that we are have been kind of conditioned to exist with our with our devices and having such discomfort at sitting still and not using those idle moments to to check our phones, which again I'm I'm completely guilty of this, and it's something that I have to work with a lot. But for me, I guess music and the the way that I make music, I I want it to be connected to to something very present. I think there's there's a um an effort on my part to be extremely present while I'm composing something and extremely present while performing it as well. And the ultimate test of that is can I sit in a stretch of silence without needing to fill it? And it's also kind of an interaction on a more cosmic level. I think creating space and silence feels to me like I'm playing music with the universe, with reality. Um that there's that is the accompaniment, is is this layer of the present moment. And the the effect that it has on a composition can be, I think, really powerful. And this dynamic range as well, I think, kind of accentuates the moments that are fuller. Um, that it can go from something that's whisper quiet or very, very sparse to something really densely arranged and and uh kind of maximalist.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, I really fascinating what you're talking about being about being present, because I've read interviews where you've talked about spirituality and um like I think you know, in comparing it to like like you were saying, this kind of uh compulsion we all have to feel, or maybe not even compulsion we all have, but like yeah, partly the compulsion we all have to feel the sound and vision around us, as well as how that is like pushed on us. I mean, how do you feel like this idea of present for you has changed in the last few years? You know, because it does feel like there has been such an acceleration, like even in terms of like Spotify playlists when it comes to music, right down to just any kind of interactions we have with technology and how technology is part of every aspect of our lives, you know. Has that tested your ability to be present at all?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, definitely. I I think it's become so much harder to be present and and and the way that these technologies have become more insidious has definitely tested that more so with every passing moment. Um I think when I first started learning to meditate, which was 10 or 12 years ago, the difficulty of being present and and the way that that was interacting with technology was was already at play, but it's gotten so much more difficult. And you know, that might be why things like uh meditation have become more popular. It's really filling a need that people have to connect back to themselves, connect back to the people in their lives and their own mind. And I I think what with the news being the way that it is and and and it uh being this insidious force clogging a lot of our brains, clogging my brain, yeah. It's it's become so much more important to carve out space in my mind.

SPEAKER_00:

Same, same, very, very much so. And I I loved what you were saying about, and I'm I'm gonna misquote you here unfortunately, but when you were sort of saying about how like the space and quiet in the music is like a kind of a form of communing with the cosmos. And I I know I've not quite got the words that you use there. Is that something that you feel like when you're making music as yourself that you uh it becomes part of a practice of like bringing in presentness?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, at its best, I think it is. Um, it's it's a hard state to reach and it it requires a lot of discipline on my part. Um really carving out periods of time in a day to only be doing that, and as well as other other practices that I do to, I guess, center myself and try and get my mind to like the right wavelength in order to be able to connect with with reality that way.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And I wanted to go back and ask you a few questions about like the beginning and about how things started for you. And and so where whereabouts did you grow up?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, so I grew up um I grew up about an hour north of the city. Um, so kind of where the suburbs meet the country. It's about an hour south of where I live now, which is considerably more country and woodsy. Um so I grew up there and eventually made my way down to the city in Brooklyn, basically like in the middle of university. Um, I ended up switching schools and moving down to the city, and then I spent my 20s in the city.

SPEAKER_00:

So that was like we're talking about the early 2000s or the late 90s?

SPEAKER_01:

Um for when I was in the in Brooklyn. Yeah, I m I moved I moved down to the city in uh beginning of 2006.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And what was it like at the time? Because I mean, people it's all that's kind of an era that has become mythologized, not just in music with like the whole sort of Brooklyn strokes LCD type thing, but also in terms of like the culture developing just across the board. Like, were you like an active participant in like what we call a scene, or like what was your sort of like feelings going into that and living there at that time?

SPEAKER_01:

Um when I first moved down there, the first couple of years I was there, I was definitely drawn by my impression of what was going on down there. Um, not as much the the kind of like Strokes Interpol scene, more like the um what was called freak folk scene at the time. Um, but so like um like a band like Akron Family who were in my mind, they were making records that were just sounded so like they were in their own universe. Like they didn't sound like city records to me per se. They sounded they sounded like these these wild art projects that people were making in their apartment, surrounded by like a kind of uh a kind of shape shifting collective of people. And that that was really interesting to me. Um, you know, I was also drawn down by the just kind of the the Dylan mythology. Um and and I did live like near his old stomping grounds when I first moved down there, but quickly found out that that was very much a bygone era and that a lot of the culture in that neighborhood was kind of serving the myth, but that that energy wasn't there anymore. And it was in Brooklyn, but I could not find my way in for a while. Um, I just didn't really know people when I moved down, I didn't know other musicians. Um, it was a pretty isolating time socially for me. And I was starting to play shows, but I didn't have any kind of audience or following. So I was trying to play the places that seemed cool to me. And I started off playing a few that were very much not cool, and then I eventually got to play some of the the spots that had more um just had more going on. Uh places like the cake shop was that was a place we played a lot. That was in on the lower east side. And that was always like very welcoming to us as far as that like it was in the beginning, it was hard to find someone who would book us because we'd be like, hey, we want to play a show. We can't bring any people, but we'd like to play a show. And if you're lucky, you know, a booker would say, All right, we're gonna put you on a five-band bill at uh on a Tuesday night. And I was grateful that anyone responded at all, but it took a while to to get any footing, and it took a while for me to feel like I was you know, I never really felt like I was part of a scene there, and I don't think I really felt like I was getting to know other musicians and other people in that world until things started taking off for us. Um and then all of a sudden, like people started coming to the shows. I was meeting a lot of other musicians, playing shows with musicians I really liked, getting to know the different clubs and club owners, and the whole thing changed. But you know, as far as what was going on in the city at the time, I had really strange vantage points because I had this vantage point of going to these places that seemed like they were cool, but when I would show up with them, there was nobody there. So it's like I didn't I didn't know what the way in was. And then the other vantage point that I had was this was like after being in the city for about two years, uh, I moved to Williamsburg, and I was living with with a couple of guys who were nightlife DJs, and they were very much in the world of like, you know, I heard them practicing their set uh like in the early evening before they'd go out at like 11 at night and come back at five in the morning. And um, I'd hear them practicing practicing the DJ set, and it was like L C D Sound of Silver was like every single day. They were that was like their their record of that time, and that that really like spoke to their experience. And I was um, you know, I went out to a couple of their nights here and there, and it was not my scene, but it very much I could feel that energy of that like Indie Slea's time, and it was it was really at its peak at that moment. So I I both of these are kind of happening at the same time. Like I was I was adjacent to this the kind of Indie Slea's world, but not a part of it. I was trying to become a part of this experimental folk scene, but at the time, like at the time in Brooklyn, there was like an experimental folk scene, and then there was like a folk scene. And the music I was making at the time was not folky enough for the the kind of straightforward folk, and it wasn't weird enough for the for the freaks, and I was kind of a man without a country. And then yeah, like I said, once things took off for us around 2009, everything changed. And I don't know that we were necessarily a part of any particular scene, but we started touring a lot. We started playing a lot of New York shows that were, you know, selling out and and getting to play with with bigger bands. And um and that was when I started to feel like a sense of connection to what was happening musically around me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's so interesting that you were saying about um like Akron family, because I was actually really surprised that like Atlas had this sort of formation point in New York because it's to me, there is something just subjectively again that feels so pastoral about it or so removed from like, I guess, what I associate stereotypically is the sort of speed, edgy uh that that sort of you know, angularness of that time. Was it hard to stick to your guns to sort of say, no, this is what I feel, this is the sound that I've got that we we're making, you know, or did you sort of feel like, oh god, maybe we should just like you know, sell our guitars and buy whatever James Murphy said?

SPEAKER_01:

Um well, like the first few years that I was down there making the first three records, which were uprooted, attic, and hospice. Um I through a lot of that time I was solo. I was I it was not a proper band. It started to become a band. Like I started putting a band together in 07, and we were playing shows through like 2008. The lineup didn't really solidify till the end of 2008, and that was right around the time I finished hospice, and then it became about like that record and figuring out a way to play it, and it was then around that time that it started to take off, but it didn't really feel I agree, like I don't think we sounded like a Brooklyn band per se. I think the you know, another band at that was coming up at that time and was like a few years ahead of us uh would have been Grizzly Bear, which also very pastoral, but there was this kind of pastoral uh element in Brooklyn in the 2000s between that and like the early Animal Collective Records, Sufian, um the National. Um National was a bit more like metropolitan, I'd say, in this in their sound. But um the rest of those it was this sort of like um not a contradiction exactly, but like a contrast from the the setting. Um you know, I definitely doubted what I was doing big time, especially playing these shows and nobody coming to them. But I don't think I felt as much of an urge to jump on the bandwagon of whatever was happening at the time. Um maybe it was because a lot of the more like angular stuff, like I liked it, but I wasn't wanting to write songs like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And to me, those those artists were like less less about narrative and and less about lyricism. Not that they had bad lyrics, but I think it was maybe secondary. And it was not what I was listening for when I listened to those artists, you know. I think it was like a mood and it was a and it was an energy and a feeling.

SPEAKER_00:

And and uh Hospice was, you know, is considered like a big breakthrough record. And is it sometimes people call it like one of the saddest records ever made? I mean, how how do you how do you feel about that? Do you feel like is that like, hey, job well done if if someone feels sad when they listen to it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think I well, I think so. You know, I think I knew when I made it that it was sad, and it because I knew where it came from, and I knew the effect that I was hoping listening would have. And so for someone to say that that record makes them sad when they listen to it or helps connect them to their sadness, um, that does feel like it's I'm like, well, that's what I was going for. Um I guess what feels like sometimes gets lost in the description of it as a sad record, or the pigeonholing of it as a sad record, is that to me it feels more angry than sad. I think it it's a record with a a ton of anger in it, and that that was a big part of where it came from was this unresolved, unspoken anger. And you know, I think anger and sadness are closely related emotions, so they can be. In the case of hospice, I think they they really are. But when I listen, I don't listen to the record much, but you know, when I when we perform those songs, and in those rare instances where I'm listening back to that record, like what I hear is anger that had a difficulty expressing itself any other way.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, because the thematically, like the uh the album sort of centers around like an emotionally abusive relationship, like in terms of that and like the anger and the sadness and dealing with emotions that perhaps aren't the the the most welcoming to hold. Um like how in terms of like your own mental health and in terms of looking after yourself when you're working on material like that, how does that affect you?

SPEAKER_01:

Um I think that is one of the challenges of performing a record like hospice is to connect back to that energy and um specifically the anger because I I exercised a lot of that anger through that record, not just making it, but like performing it, because we performed those songs so many times when that record took off, and in the in the years since then, that I really it was very cathartic and I did I did I did get a lot of that anger out. And it's not that I'm an entirely unangry person now, but in terms of that story and where it came from, I don't hold anger about it anymore. Um, and so to perform those songs, I sort of have to for myself um I have to connect to different anger, I guess. Even if I'm singing words about this song, I might be for myself channeling anger about something else in that moment. Because otherwise it I think it becomes inauthentic. The emotion is is put on and and um disingenuine. And so to me it has to just it has to access anger one way or another, but it can't be forced. And I don't I because I also don't think that's really a healthy thing to do, to force yourself to become angry about something that you have worked through.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, because it's become a different emotion by then, so you're sort of tricking like a feeling that isn't really there, you know. It's like it might not be anger anymore, that thing, it might it might have become something else, you know. And yeah, it strikes me as very like it reminds me of when I hear actors talk about like the method or like how they'll find an emotion that connects with something in their life to bring into a character that's expressing an emotion, you know, like because because narrative is such a strong part of your music. Do you feel that there's an element along with that that that kind of connects with like performance?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, definitely. Um, I think that is something that I picked up on sometime in the last like 10 or 15 years, that there is some element of um probably something in common with acting in in the way that I deliver these songs and the way that I perform them. That there is a bit of inhabiting a character or a persona. Part of it, I guess, is for me to differentiate between myself offstage and on stage, and not wanting those to be distinctly different people. I want there to be a through line, but I think on stage there for me needs to be inhabiting a bit of a bit of um a bit of something, a bit of a different version of the same person connecting to a past self, as if I'm kind of playing myself at a different age.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, hopefully without digital de-aging. But yeah, I mean, so I mean, Blight is coming out very soon. And like, so do you feel like when it comes to like a record actually being released as opposed to recording it? Like, do you have to kind of reconnect with it a little bit? Um because obviously the creative stage of it is finished.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, um most yeah, I I almost always do. Um in this case, this is this has been the the shortest period of time between finishing a record and releasing it, because I think we finished mixing and and mastering in like March.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh right.

SPEAKER_01:

And I've never I've never had it happen so fast, but it would we just got lucky in terms of uh transgressive's release schedule and and everybody's willingness to to move fast with this. And so it's been less about me needing to reconnect to the material than it is to just stay connected to it. Um and with a lot of records, I've finished it and then I've wanted to move on. And this one I haven't felt that way. This one I've felt like I wanted to stay connected, and maybe because there's something about it that feels a little less um, you know, I think it's a personal record, but it's not exactly about me. It's and I feel because I feel passionately about the topics and the ideas behind it, they don't feel like they are presently things that I'm ready to move past. Um I feel a bit like I'm I'm on a mission here, and that I, you know, the mission is to is to spread the gospel and what that has meant in the time since finishing the record has been staying engaged with these issues, reading more, thinking and writing more about these topics, so that I can talk about them now that the record is coming out and now that people are gonna start interacting with it and and thinking about it themselves.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it feels like these these are topics that aren't going anywhere. They're not that looks like they're not gonna be going anywhere, you know. It's an interesting thing to sort of sort of do something that is zeitgeised without I get the sort of sincere impression that that's not that was like a never a conscious thing to go, I'm gonna do something zeitgeised at all. But um, the the at the same time is more just the fact that like so many of us are going, what the fuck? You know, we'll yeah, you know, I think digital technology has the sort of effect of making us like all feel the same things. And that's one of the things that's making us feel is this sort of disorientation and uh questioning. So I think it sort of does tap into things without it needing to actually be set out to tap into things, if that makes sense. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks. Yeah, I mean I don't think I've ever I don't think I've I've definitely never intentionally created something that tapped into the Zeitgeist, and if anything did kind of take on a bit of like pop culture rev relevancy, it was never by design. Um I did recognize while I was writing this record that it was timely, just you know, because I I knew I was writing about present things, things that were on my mind, but also things that I have had lots of conversations with people about and know it's it's top of mind for a lot of people, and it's and I'm reading about these these issues all the time, and you kind of can't help but encounter them. So, you know, that's that's a very new thing for me. You know, there was there was a sincere effort to be writing about what is and what may be. But I mean it's definitely no guarantee that the zeitgeist will will embrace the thing, you know. It's like I think maybe the way of talking about it on this record is not um it might not be something people are willing to face in this way yet. Um and something I've also learned through the last couple of decades of making music, making these records, is that some of them take a long time to sink in, take years. And I don't find out until five, ten years later that that the record connected with somebody. Um so we'll just we'll see.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll see. That must be a really nice feeling when you when you do hear like maybe personal anecdotes of something that has of someone connecting with your work uh years after it's come out.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean that that really it means a lot to me and it is very validating because often like your feelings about a record are kind of stuck in the time that you released them and the time that you made them. And so that to be told that it actually is is one that came to mean a lot to somebody after the fact is a good reminder of the life of the record begins on release day. It doesn't end there.

SPEAKER_00:

Definitely. The rest is the to uh everyone else is the the iceberg, the under-the-water iceberg stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, and especially um so much happens without you being able to see it. People, you know, people's relationship with the music they love, the music that means something to them, most of that happens privately, I think. And certainly with my music, I think most of it happens privately for people. It's it's not something they necessarily listen to with a group of people, it's not necessarily something that they will talk outwardly about, but they it's kind of part of their inner emotional process. And you know, if that can happen, whether I know about it or not, that feels like a success. Um, because that was always the music that spoke most to me when I was younger, was um, I don't know, music that really got in there and helped me think about my life differently or the world I was living in differently. And I didn't necessarily tell anybody about it. Sometimes I kept it as a closely guarded secret, like this was this is mine. And I have just been learning to trust that process for the things that I'm putting out there for other people.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And just just finally, Peter, if you could go back in time and tell yourself something at the age, I'd say like the most pivotal like age when you were just getting into music, or what would be the piece of advice that you would tell yourself?

SPEAKER_01:

You mean like um like pre-Antlers, like just when music was becoming a part of my life? Um practice. I really I didn't come to practice until you know the last 10 years, come to like appreciate the importance of it. You know, I just wanted to make stuff, I just wanted to experiment, I just wanted to to like have fun in my own little world with it. And you know, when I was younger coming like first learning to play piano and guitar and other instruments, um I was always really resistant to practice and I thought I just thought it was boring. And I was I yeah, looking looking back, I think there's something really magical about practice and the way that it can open up possibilities as opposed to this kind of like you know, it felt like more school to me at the time, but I think I've come to recognize that the more confidence that you build through practice, the more possibilities open for you musically. And it and it and it kind of I think it spills over into other areas of your life too.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I definitely relate to that. Um, particularly when I started making music. Um when I was young, it was all about I was sort of jumping over my tail, trying to get like the the sound, the result, the just being able to sort of stand there and play. And you know, it takes uh it takes, yeah, it took me some like a natural part of my journey to sort of appreciate the practice. And like you say, it does factor into other parts of life as well, whether that's cooking, you know, or for me, I can think of cooking being a particularly um or or like yeah, communicating with people, I think sometimes.

SPEAKER_01:

Totally. And it's also it's a good um, it is a good way to kind of um uh become present with whatever activity you're doing to keep the the inflow of information and news and and distraction at bay. It's it's a focusing centering activity, or it can be.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um, Peter, thank you so much. And thanks also for getting uh um first time ever on a show we've had a reference to the OC, which I I it's definitely been an ambition of mine for that to come out at some point. Nice, awesome. Okay, so that was me, Paul Hamford, talking with Peter Silberman of the Antlers, and we had that conversation on September the 25th, 2025. Thank you so much, Peter, for sharing your time and thoughts with me there. Blight, the Antlers seventh album is released on Friday, October the 10th, 2025, via Transgressive Records. And if you like the show and you haven't already, please do give it a subscribe, give the show a rating and a review on the platform of your choice. It really, really, really, really does help. I know I say that every week, but you know, it's a bit of a cliche, you do a podcast, you just have to say that shit. But I do really genuinely appreciate it. If you like what I do and you want to check out more of what I do, you can listen to my radio documentary, The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock across the Berlin Wall, by heading on over to the BBC Sounds app or on the BBC World Service homepage. And my book, Coming to Berlin, is still available in good bookshops or via the publisher's website, Velocity Press. Lust and Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica, the global but still family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, and microphones, studio quality, yet affordable products, because they believe that high-quality audio should be accessible to all. So wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnica.com to check out all of their range of stuff. The music that you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of Lost and Sound, is by Tom Giddens. Hyperlink in the podcast description. And so, yeah, that's it. I hope whatever you're doing, you're having a really fantastic one, and I'll look forward to chatting to you soon.

unknown:

No, no, no.