You may have been unaware of it, but you will almost certainly have heard Bleachers’ music already. They’ve secretly been the backing band on recent albums by Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and St Vincent, in large part because frontman Jack Antonoff’s day job is being the most in-demand producer in the world, responsible for many of the defining pop records of this decade – it’s not for nothing that he recently won the producer of the year Grammy for the third time in a row.
His fourth album with Bleachers begins in the much the same vein as its three predecessors, with strong echoes of fellow New Jerseyite Bruce Springsteen, most notably on Modern Girl, and to a lesser extent the National on motorik opener I Am Right on Time. Elsewhere, Del Rey guests on the atmospheric but unspectacular Alma Mater. Then, midway through, the so-so Boss-isms give way to so-so ballads. As you’d expect, given Antonoff’s production chops, these are all tastefully realised, but there’s precious little excitement to be found in the likes of the Auto-Tuned ambient of The Waiter or the Needles and Pins-lite of Woke Up Today. While Bleachers is far from being a bad album, it’s even further from being an exciting one.
