Consider the Source Lyrics
I don't think about what I can't see
It don't count if it ain't staring at me
Little choices I cannot recall
Get it quick or not at all
Every bargain has a hidden cost:
What was saved? what was lost?
Forty color-ways and free returns:
Where's it made? What'd they earn?
Is it enough to add to cart with buyer's remorse?
Well if you don't know where to start, consider the source
What becomes of what I throw away?
Broken cord, takeout tray
Leaky battery and shattered screen
Spilling ink I can't clean
Is it too much to be undone, too late to change course?
Before condemning anyone, Consider the source
I set the table for an easy meal
I don't mind what I can't feel:
Tired turkey in a crowded cage
He can't peck, he can't rage
Little choices and the way they spread
Who must starve so we'd be fed?
I don't think about what I can't see
But now that bird won't stop staring at me
I tap my heart before I dine, but quickly divorce
From all your agony down the line, and all I endorse
Is it enough to add to cart with buyer's remorse?
Well if you don't know where to start, consider the source
_______________ End _______________
Consider the Source Song Meaning (The Antlers)
“Consider the Source,” the opening track on The Antlers’ 2025 album "Blight", feels like a quiet manifesto. With fragility in its edges and urgency in its tone, it interrogates our moral distance from the damage our everyday lives inflict on the world—especially through consumption, waste, and systemic disregard.
1. The emotional and lyrical through-line
From its opening lines—“I don’t think about what I can’t see / It don’t count if it ain’t staring at me”—the speaker confesses a habitual blindness: we easily ignore what lies out of sight. That invisibility is the shield we use to soften moral pressure. Throughout the song, mundane images accumulate: broken cords, takeout trays, leaky batteries, shattered screens—small discarded objects that carry hidden stories and costs. The refrains about “buyer’s remorse” and “every bargain has a hidden cost” force the listener to acknowledge the ghosts behind the transaction.
The second verse tightens the lens. Dinner on a table, a “tired turkey in a crowded cage”—the lyric shifts from anonymous waste to a living being. Suddenly the cost is no longer abstract but corporeal, and the guilt becomes more specific. The narrator, who once dissociated from what he “can’t see,” now watches that bird stare back: the blindness cracks.
Towards the end, there’s self-confrontation: tapping the heart, divorcing from downstream agony, endorsing the act of adding to cart anyway. We are complicit, aware but still reliant on norms that outsource responsibility. “If you don’t know where to start, consider the source” becomes a kind of mantra—an invitation to look past convenience, to trace origin, and to face what’s sustained by our inertia.
2. Context and inspiration: Blight and The Antlers’ current moment
There is no published interview or account in which Peter Silberman speaks directly about this specific song’s lyrical genesis, but "Blight" itself is clearly shaped by ecological awareness. The album was born in Silberman’s home studio in Ulster County, New York, and his walks across the surrounding fields awakened an acute sensitivity to how nature is under threat. In reviews, critics describe "Blight" as The Antlers’ reckoning with collective mortality and ecological unease.
Thematically, this song introduces what many see as the album’s pulsing nervous system—a refusal to treat environmental damage as background noise, and a demand that listeners ask: who paid, who suffered, and what was made invisible?
It also fits into The Antlers’ arc of songwriting that has long balanced spectacle and interiority. While Hospice (2009) transformed personal trauma into a haunting narrative allegory, "Blight" shifts outward, grappling with systems and collective accountability. In this transition, “Consider the Source” is less about confession and more about awakening.
3. What it offers listeners
On one level, the song invites self-examination: how much of my comfort is paid for by another’s erasure? How many hidden costs lie behind the veneer of ease? The lyricism resists binary judgment; the speaker is complicit, aware, inadequate—and so are we.
Musically minimalist in its early moments and carefully layered as it unfolds, it mirrors the gradual unveiling of consequences: what seems quiet and distant eventually becomes present, human, unavoidable.
For long-time fans, it marks a continuation of Silberman’s deeply moral imagination—but one turned outward, urging us to see not only emotional faintness but structural neglect. For a newer audience drawn in by climate anxiety and questions of sustainability, it gives voice to the frustration of being too small to fix things, yet too aware to pretend they don’t matter.
4. Final thought
In short, "Consider the Source" doesn’t just set the tone for "Blight"—it gives the album its moral compass. It asks its listeners, with compassion not accusation: Where do your choices begin and end? And if your view is always only of what’s in front of you, can you ever truly see the cost?
__________ ___________ ___________
FAQ Section
Who sung the song "Consider the Source" by The Antlers?
The song "Consider the Source" was sung by The Antlers.
Who wrote the song "Consider the Source" by The Antlers?
Peter Silberman & Michael Lerner.
Who produced the song "Consider the Source" by The Antlers?
Peter Silberman.
Music Video
Song Details
Artist: The Antlers
Album: Blight
Genre: Rock
Language: English
Released: October 10, 2025
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