Everyone For Ten Minutes

The Roast

“Jack Antonoff has spent the last decade quietly installing his nervous system into half the current pop charts, and now he hands in a Bleachers album that sounds suspiciously like the leftover stems from every session he ran in 2024. The gated snares thunder in like they always do, the sax enters on cue around the second chorus of nearly every track, and the synths swell with that familiar Springsteen-via-Hampton-Studios glow that he has been selling to Taylor and Lana and Sabrina for years. His voice sits in that strained upper register where every syllable is a small act of devotion, and the arrangements pile harmonies on top of harmonies until the whole thing resembles a man cheering at his own parade. There are real songs buried in here, genuinely tender melodic ideas about devotion and middle age and the panic of being seen, but they keep getting rerouted through the same maximalist pop-rock circuitry he installed in everyone else first. The title is the most honest thing on the record, because that is exactly what the album does, it tries to be everyone for ten minutes and ends up sounding like the most expensive demo reel in modern pop.”

The Bright Side

When Antonoff stops chasing the stadium and lets a song breathe with just piano and that fragile cracked voice, the writing is genuinely moving and reminds you why every A-list pop star keeps calling him back. The melodic instincts are still elite, the bridges still land, and a handful of these choruses will absolutely soundtrack someone driving home crying in a way that feels earned rather than engineered.

Hardest Sneer

“You cannot produce half the pop charts and then act surprised when your own album sounds like a tribute compilation to artists you yourself invented.”

Issues (3)