Put the new Bleachers record on for a friend and they might be floored: Do the National have another record out? On the opening track “I Am Right on Time,” the similarities are uncanny: the jut-jaw baritone, the cryptic profundities, the modest motorik pulse driving an illusion of endless ascension. In time, though, the millennial touches of Jack Antonoff reveal themselves: a sense of shared disillusion (“Our ballroom bliss/Counterfeit, under-extended”), a stray “whoo!” in the background. Even the downers on a Bleachers record can feel like a party might break out.
Antonoff and his crew are still trying to answer the plea from the last album’s title. There, Bleachers’ best grooves were tied up in stadium-made swirl. It was a world where Talking Heads headlined Live Aid: the quirks vanished at scale. But on Bleachers—especially on the singles-heavy first half—the band is simply playing for each other, much to the songs’ benefit. “Jesus Is Dead” is a dispatch from New York that wistfully namechecks Longwave and the venerated dance-punk label DFA, but the track moves with the economy of prime Strokes; instead of cresting on some post-punk swell, Antonoff dials up a dual-sax solo. They play the rapid-fire list song “Modern Girl”—think “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” crossed with “Dancing in the Dark,” but listenable—with the verve and cross-stage winks of a seasoned bar band.
But most bar bands aren’t fronted by a three-time Grammy-winning Producer of the Year. Jack big-ups a couple of the boys on “Modern Girl,” a nice gesture if a little low-effort; later, when someone yells “fuck off!” after Antonoff puts some “venue herbs” on blast, it lands with the dutifulness of an employee posting a positive Glassdoor review. As with any of Antonoff’s A-list production jobs, the Bleachers project is as much mythological as personal. So when an actual A-lister—Lana Del Rey, who’s mastered both of those dimensions—shows up to duet on “Alma Mater,” he goes for broke. The pair race down the Jersey Turnpike, screaming about Balenciaga, fake-crying to Tom Waits, throwing shirts out the window. The result is surprisingly blissful: cocooned in a puttering sophistipop arrangement that recalls Antonoff’s recent work with the 1975, Jack and Lana luxuriate in the chaos.
Those hijinks aside, the fourth Bleachers record marks a conscious shift in subject matter. Previous albums drew from the unimaginable loss of Antonoff’s younger sister to brain cancer. Even at his most life-affirming, there was a mania familiar to anyone who’s endured something similar. Now he’s trying something different. “I’m not numb to the pain,” says skate legend-turned-motivational speaker Rodney Mullen at the end of the sweetly desperate ballad “Ordinary Heaven,” as Jack mutters along. “I would argue I’m more conscious of it than anyone else. But I’m also more conscious of what that gives me.” “Ordinary Heaven,” like the album’s outlook as a whole, takes inspiration from Antonoff’s wife, the actor Margaret Qualley. She makes a left-channel cameo on “Call Me After Midnight,” an adult-contemporary R&B strutter that exchanges one Bruce for another (Hornsby). Co-produced by Kevin Abstract and Romil Hemnani, the song is Antonoff at his best: chameleonic, tender, and casually grandiose. “They don’t want you, they want your faith,” he howls at the climax. Then he cuts himself off to answer the door.
