Music
Review: Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff Is an Emo Elton John on ‘Gone Now’
Our take on the second album from the tune machine
Jack Antonoff is a grown-up emo kid and a fully
realized tune machine – an Elton John whose yellow-brick road always leads back
to his sad bedroom. Bleachers’ second LP exudes a kind of afflicted bliss,
anthemic Eighties pop and R&B impressions built from the harried, diaristic isolation that era’s Top 40 only allowed in at the margins. Lorde
co-writes and sings on the synth-pop gusher “Don’t Take the Money,”
and Carly Rae Jepsen shows up on “Hate That You Know Me,” part snappy
electro-pop tune, part industrial angst spiral.