The Antlers - Green To Gold [LP]

Green to Gold is the much-anticipated new album from New York based, Indie/Folk band, The Antlers. Perhaps what distinguishes Green to Gold from the rest of The Antlers’ canon is its, well, sunniness. Conceived and written almost entirely in the morning hours, Green to Gold is the band’s first new music in nearly seven years, and easily their most luminous to date. ”I think this is the first album I’ve made that has no eeriness in it,” singer and primary songwriter Peter Silberman asserts. “I set out to make Sunday morning music.”

The brighter outlook emerged, paradoxically, after a succession of ominous events. In 2015, Silberman suffered with an auditory condition that made touring near impossible and he retreated to the quiet of Upstate New York to heal. His return in 2017 with a solo album was short lived when he was diagnosed with lesions on his vocal chords, which required surgery and again a quiet rest and recovery period. Silberman explains. “I took these health obstacles as a sign that I should change course for a little while. I hadn’t made a full stop like that since The Antlers began.”

But he still felt the strong pull to spend time and work with longtime drummer Michael Lerner, and frequently invited him up to visit the idyllic hamlet he now called home. The two friends’ days typically involved long walks in the woods, but routinely ended up in Silberman’s converted-garage studio. “I would record him playing drums in the studio while he listened to old soul and R&B songs in headphones... and those drum recordings ultimately served as starting points for the songs that followed. At the time, we were merely attempting to make music together again, without really knowing how to approach it, or to what end.”

“I think the shift in tone is the result of getting older. It doesn’t make sense for me to try to tap into the same energy that I did ten or fifteen years ago, because I continue to grow as a person, as I’m sure our audience does too. Green to Gold is about this idea of gradual change,” he sums up. “People changing over time, struggling to accept change in those they love, and struggling to change themselves. And yet despite all our difficulty with this, nature somehow makes it look easy.”