Bleachers
Bleachers
★★★★
DIRTY HIT
In parallel to his work as a songwriter, musician and studio bod for St. Vincent, Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift, New Jersey’s Jack Antonoff has pursued a hit-and-miss career as the frontman of indie poppers Bleachers. 2021’s Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night featured a vocal cameo from Bruce Springsteen on Chinatown, apparently further inspiring Antonoff on this self-titled LP. The try-too-hard Modern Girl shoots for The Boss doing Subterranean Homesick Blues but lands closer to Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire, though it’s thankfully not representative of the record as a whole. Instead, there’s taut New Wave (Little Moves, Jesus Is Dead), but mainly moody electronic balladry (think Streets Of Philadelphia), with Del Rey turning up to fulfil the intent of her one repeated line (“I’ll make it darker”) on Alma Mater.
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Picture: Alex Lockett