Jack Antonoff with band at a concert in North Carolina
Photo: imago/ZUMA Press
Pop in all caps. According to Wikipedia, the Bleachers’ music is primarily influenced by the films of John Hughes. That’s actually a nice idea, moving away from the usual “sounds like” name-dropping: which films influenced the music, which music influenced the lyrics, which texts influenced the film? You don’t know if it’s true anyway unless someone makes the connection known, like Bleachers singer Jack Antonoff did, for example, in an interview. In any case, when I listen to the new, fourth, self-titled Bleachers album, “Back into the Future”, the first, and John Green’s books, my ability to make associations comes to mind, but not told from the first-person perspective, which is always the most adolescent in Green, but as clear review.
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However, if you start with “sounds like,” the first association would be The National. And in fact, a piece like “Isimo” wouldn’t stand out on a The National “Best of and Rarities” album. But bleachers put people in a better mood. The euphoria that the album radiates is not the euphoria of a pleasant attack of melancholy, but more of a prom euphoria. This comes through most directly in the second, most idiotic piece on the record, “Modern Girl”, a stomper that sings about the title heroine, “shaking your ass tonight”, with a saxophone solo that is actually completely terrible, but which in this context seems deserved and logical a comical and also very uplifting effect.
“I’m so tired of having self-respect / let’s do something we regret,” sings Jack Antonoff elsewhere, another of the songs on the album in which the voice becomes sonorous and is reminiscent of The National. “No regrets” can also refer to the music, which just throws together the solos, the choirs, bad funk bass, and Bruce Springsteen-esque stuff without any consideration for loss in terms of reputation or style. Above all, the Bleachers’ album is a lot of fun, especially in this “Let’s do something” attitude.
Antonoff actually can’t lose. His main job is as a producer for Lana del Rey (who appears on the beautiful song “Alma Mater” on “Bleachers”) and Taylor Swift, among others, and is awarded what feels like dozens of Grammys every year. You can tell from his band, which is also active as a studio band for Antonoff’s producer jobs, that there is a producer at work here: always adding a layer, adding a track there, but everything always as transparent as possible, and here something polyphonic. In this sense, Bleachers are the indie rock equivalent of Saga: Songs for testing high-end stereo systems.
But not only and a lot more, because they always – pop – end up directly in the heart area, at least all of the love songs. “The tiniest moves you make /Watching my whole world shake,” sings Jack Anotoff in “Tiny Moves” over a beautifully dull Neu! beat, onto which all sorts of stuff is layered, glockenspiel, strings. In the last verse everything goes up an octave and the clouds completely clear. A very nice record.
Bleachers: Bleachers (Virgin Music Las/Universal Music)