"On June 7, 2023, the sky over New York turned orange. Millions of people peered upward to find the air thick with acrid smoke, the smell of wildfires having drifted south from Canada. As far as climate disruptions go, this was considerably more alarming than warm weather in November but not as imminently threatening as fire tearing through your city. For many East Coasters, it was just plain surreal. The sky was smoky-thick and golden-hued, and, strangest of all, the drudgery of daily life just carried on."
""Something in the Air," the second single from the Antlers' new album, Blight, describes that environmental event, or one seemingly much like it. If the Antlers have accrued a sometimes-unfair reputation as a "sad" band, the song's dirgelike, minor-key pall won't change anyone's mind. "Oh, keep your window closed today," Peter Silberman, the project's longtime leader, sings in a high, keening voice. But instead of capturing the surreal spectacle of such an event, or confronting its frightening implications, the song wallows in banality:"
On June 7, 2023, smoke from Canadian wildfires turned the New York sky orange, creating a surreal climate disruption that left daily life largely unchanged. The Antlers' song "Something in the Air" depicts a similar event but pairs a dirgelike minor-key mood with banal, domestic instructions about charging phones and working from home. The band has long centered its music on intense mourning, notably 2009's Hospice, which examined personal grief through a cancer-ward narrative. Peter Silberman shifts that focus toward collective ecological grief on Blight, conveying dread about environmental catastrophe with moments of sincere urgency and tedious repetition.
Read at Pitchfork
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