Jack Antonoff’s band revisits the Great American Songbook, blending intimate lyrics with catchy anthems.
Acoustic, electric, or bass guitars, piano, synths, harpsichord, drums, banjo, harmonica, glockenspiel, vibraphone, sitar, cello… enough already. Jack Antonoff is indeed a one-man orchestra capable of a great many things.
Proof of this is Bleachers’ fifth album, on which he writes and composes the songs by himself, before taking on production, surrounded by his crew (Rob Moose on violin, Evan Smith or Zem Audu on saxophone) in some of the coolest studios in the world—the Forwards Studios in Rome, the Church Studios in London, the Tamarind in Los Angeles, or his beloved Electric Lady in New York, where Antonoff spends a large part of the year.
Staying true to the malleability of his pop-rock milieu, the New Jersey musician presents himself as a voracious and discerning music lover. You can hear The National (notably a vocal style often reminiscent of Matt Berninger), Bruce Springsteen, but also the Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac or Beck, while Dylan-esque echoes resonate here and there.
In any case, if a ballad may appear (I Can’t Believe You’re Gone), flanked by a healthy dose of melancholy, a contagious ardor dominates the entirety of these eleven songs. The martial drumbeat of Sideways, the gritty guitar of Dancing, the seventies soul core of The Van, the sly Americana of the single Dirty Wedding Dress, the charming country of She’s from Before, the organs and the rallying backing vocals of I’m not Joking, the synth-pop quickly overtaken by the organic vibe of Upstairs at Els…
Everything contributes to making this record a playground for sound that is at once demonstrative, through its genre variations and instrumental richness, and strangely immediate — because Antonoff never loses sight of the handmade warmth of live energy: “I had never known my name until you spoke it from your chest /Yes, the heavens opened up and pulled me in, I stared and said, ‘Oh, yeah’”.
Between intimate lyrics and catchy anthems, indie pop and FM rock, the Great American Songbook here has good reason to rejoice in its heirs, however indirect they may be. Far more than the star producer for Lana Del Rey or Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff once again proves himself as a landscaper of a pop that is neither priggish nor complacent.
Everyone for Ten Minutes (Dirty Hit/Virgin Records/Universal). Release on May 22. In concert at Salle Pleyel, Paris, on November 21.
