RCA
Synth Pop, 2021
Bleachers is essentially a front for Jack Antonoff, one of the brains behind my favorite Taylor Swift songs, ahem, I mean, some of the biggest hits recently from mostly female acts, so much so that his “being passed around” is quite the meme out there. Hence, don’t think we have an actual band behind the songs here, as Mr Antonoff assembled the songs together with the appropriate software in his studio hardware. There’s a reason why the music from this act is labeled by most folks as synth pop and not, say, indie rock or heartland rock.
Not that Mr Antonoff is content on being the musical fiancé of Ms Swift, though. Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night sees him channeling his inner Bruce Springsteen—the Boss even shows up as a guest vocalist on Chinatown–and it’s eerie how he captures the vocal inflections of the Boss himself on tracks such as How Dare You Want More and Don’t Go Dark.
For the most part, the songs here are pretty well put together, respectable efforts of new wave music. There is one problem, though: too many songs here just meander around, so much so that they become pleasant background tracks of some bloke murmuring or singing unobtrusively so that people can do whatever they want to do without being distracted by the music. Lana Del Rey repays the favor of Mr Antonoff helping her to put together some of her bigger songs by showing up here, but I am hard pressed to even recall what Secret Life sounds like.
Of course, there are exceptions. Stop Making This Hurt has a killer hook, channeling upbeat depression in a way that reminds me of I Wanna Get Better, still the best song Mr Antonoff kept for himself, while the aforementioned The Boss-wannabe songs are pretty solid as well. My favorite is the beautifully discordant 91, mostly because there is nothing predictable about it. It’s a catchy, awesomely melancholic upbeat tune with strings galore, but the song takes me to unexpected places as it progresses, and it’s a fabulous musical journey in itself.
The lyrics are touch and go, though, like most of Mr Antonoff’s output. He always has interesting stories to tell, but his choice of phrases can sometimes feel pretentious, banal, even both at times. When he’s on point—again, see I Wanna Get Better—the result is a pure, holistic sublime musical voyage both melodically and lyrically. Here, however, I find myself cringing a few times while reading the lyrics of each song, because all of them feel like angst-filled poetry more at home in Tumblr or wherever it is those kids go these days to express themselves. As a result, this is one album best listened without paying too much attention to the words of the songs.
So, Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night. It’s not bad, actually, and there are enough good bops here to do what the title of the album says. However, there are also many songs that go in one ear and then out the other too easily, and I end up recalling only a handful of songs at the end of the day. In other words, this is like half of a good album. Three oogies sound about right.
