Bleachers’ Crowning Single: “Tiny Moves”
By Caitlin Joy
From 2008 to 2015, Fun. were the richest funfetti-cake alternative-pop beside, harmoniously, a kaleidoscope of pastel, silvery and heart-shaped crystal balls. And what would be the most meaningful for the band’s Jack Antonoff’s solo project – upon a wall of elegantly damask orchestral symphonies. This orchestral project, named Bleachers, is of the slices of ripe and juicy peaches, brown-sugared molasses and crystals of maple honey-kind (as will very soon be touched upon). This guitarist, pianist and percussionist has produced honeycrisp apple pie dolloped with satiny brie, allspice apple cider warming woolen mittens and iced maple leaves for Taylor Swift. Sugary strawberry wine, quarters of freshly-picked oranges drenched in clover honey and pitch-black dark-chocolate for Lorde. French vanilla frosting, and rich olive oil tarts topped in mountains of white sugar-glazed cherries and meringue for Carly Rae Jepsen. From each of these projects and each of the others that Jack has worked on, he brings to Bleachers’ wonderland of powder-pink balloon-sleeved ballgowns, strawberry sorbet-cheeks and a disco ball’s twirling stars.
Dressed to kill in a Goddard-creased blackberry-blue tuxedo Antonoff’s first project as Bleachers, 2014’s Strange Desire, begins with the robin’s feather-quill and -conductor making of ambrosia-golden honey from ever-so-lightly chestnut brown-bruised strawberries and winter dew-shiny iced cherries inside of acoustic molasses-fudgy butterscotch-ed yellow cake as warm as what is thickly, paradisaically frosted like a crème-puff-like duvet from one’s childhood bedroom with a grandfather’s sure touch. Single “Rollercoaster” achieving this with the ripe Georgia peach-calloused fingers that count out coppery-autumn corn-sure synth-instruments and basses. “Wild Heart” works with this along with discoveries of peach and pear blossom-strings up against the Hollywood sign like curtains, and buttery honey-whiskey electric and bass guitars – of the heart and cornbread of a Waylon Jennings’ cowboy –and diamond-glittering, blinking light strings that freeze that golden-minute of lying under the stars.
This first album represented best by the treasured number “Reckless Love,” that reaches to the squishy dough of vanilla-bean sugar cookies and mother’s quilt-thick cream cheese buttercream: like heart-shaped sugar candy – hard and sure – and with twilight synths that chase and capture a beloved’s shadows deep into the woods with a butterfly net. Silver brasses magicked into candy coated disco ball-guitars, ambrosia-golden apple pie alto-saxophones that soar and tumble, gilded maple leaves from summery brasses, and violin with the hauntingly enchanting and crackling silvery-blue luminescence of a blinking mermaid motel sign, helping to capture Bleacher’s freshman year. The fortune-telling, and thus-far-tenderest, (secret-)revealingly popular “I Wanna Get Better” demonstrating a golden-bronze, richly buttery pie crust granting clover honey-oil shine to working fingers, lovingly pruned lemon-yellow garden roses, and a satin-luscious robin’s red candy apple-bow, richest in mahogany-caramel as well as tenderest to bruises. Jack’s conducting of his orange treacle-tart, E-street-raised band iconically forever-more reminding of the kneading of the dough of sugar cookies, flour and sugar flying wildly and eagerly.
From here, Jack whittled into quills, pumpkin pie strings of a blushing Midwestern homecoming dance, a star-shaped jukebox’s 1960s girl groups’ harmonies and engineering and 1950s greaser – dripping with golden kettle-corn satin – wailing cherry-red electric guitars – always with the warmth of molasses-richly-dense carrot cake of his hometown (“Don’t Take The Money”). Over Bleachers’ next album Gone Now marshmallow-sweet coconut rum drank in the topaz-sunshine, in the backseat of a Convertible became one of Jack’s keys, from the butterscotch heartland up along the coasts – all salty and sea-touched. Lullabies like “Let’s Get Married,” taking place in the candied-lemon afternoons, sprinkled in treacly handfuls of hand-chopped white chocolate with the most sumptuous of 808s. And “I Miss Those Days,” of glistening seashells made from flutes and harps, and the crashing tides of Coney Island and oozing candy-apple caramel twirling into each other like acrobats. A bass and rhythm drum respectively, and the golden, shimmering, sparkling time of rollercoasters and holding-hands making the composition. What he treasures and holds secret, he peeks at on the love-song “Everybody Lost Somebody” – acoustic-y piano keys like finding and wishing upon puffy dandelion heads, treasured 1920s, pecan-caramel jazz saxophones and softer warm brasses as sweet as pecan cookies golden-brown, along with choral vocals, gritty and rustic, whose sheath is even as rich and buttery as Louisiana brown sugar.
Jack introduces Bleachers’ junior album, Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, with “Stop Making This Hurt’s” violet-blackberry jam-kissed oatmeal bars – a grandmother’s rustic and hearty – and chai tea acoustic and electric guitars, honeyed with his creamy approach to instruments and rich and tender approach to umber-brown sugar production. “How Dare You Want More,” showing his mastery over the plum-violet with blackberry-purple oleander strings charting this inspiration to this album’s title-granting track. Thick crushed-velvet of texture and bareness of these pillars, allowing echo for the heirloom pearl synths shining and falling off a broken string; and the weighing of true happiness and the creating of a sensation of home, as strongly as his braving the astronomical pressures and stringent rules of the popstar machine. “How Dare You” becomes blessed, or rather shot through, with the light of earnestly the eggshell-white asphodel crown and Persephone’s wedding gown, that the songwriter braves for the first time. The 2021 album’s signing-off, “Don’t Go Dark” is of ripe September pomegranates and plump, strong-armed cherry autumnal pies, twinkling in keys and light, lilting strings, and satiny farmer’s market raspberry-honey harp arias, as homey as wool and rivalling the angelic operas of Hammerstein. Antonoff’s voice, sticky with saltwater rosewater taffy, and an addition to this final song’s twinkling bells, silvery like the moon’s light and holding out for hope.
Leading into, and perhaps most promising the earliest of Bleachers singles, “Chinatown” bursts with sun-ripe oranges, cherries and peaches, hand-cupped by a true love – nectary swells of bass, pomegranate-rich, dark and sweet harmonies with Antonoff’s vocals and heirloom porcelain saxophones, trumpets and metal-bodied instruments. At the same time, melting, bubbling, crackling marzipan reed-instruments, glistening, stars-and-stripes trombone rings and fluffy, sugary keys harkening back to ice-cold vanilla soft-serve from a beloved, star cart from childhood parked loyally by the New Jersey seaside upon the pier. Like a jewel. Sharing with 2024’s Bleachers is the touch of bronze-caramelized tangerine brasses, oaken and rollicking Americana drums and a ruby-red gingham blanket of rocket-like keys and bass notes that glimmer in lemonade joie de vivre. This springtime, a ribbon in 2024’s Bleachers is captured by “Tiny Moves” in handfuls of honeycomb and a basketful of ripe, honeydew-green pears.
Off of the heels of “Modern Girl,” “Tiny Moves” plants its roots of romance in flakey and buttery blueberry scones blanketed in thickly silky cream cheese icing and maple syrup. Autumn, in the glory of garnet, copper, navel oranges, golden wheat and buttermilk leaves, in the tradition of Jack’s Springsteen-touched conductor’s bow, bursts to the forth. The brasses sprout as gilded marigolds, thin and twisting stems kissing and interlacing, like a sylph’s hair living upon Jay Gatsby’s 1920s West Egg. Trumpets are rich like ambrosia, and fluttering as the spring-water of a fountain. Equally fresh and fluttering are the trombones: dark velvet-y-plum molasses in timbre and texture, the moon’s twin of the trumpet’s sun. Amber flames ricochet from Jack’s keyboard, with the lightning-power of a Nascar racer’s engine and the hearth-warmth of a star-spangled, red, white and blue firecracker. The lantern present on this latest single, nostalgic giggles and charcoal-dressed marshmallows of a campfire amidst the starry plains of America’s buttery white chocolate, manifested best, in the guitar’s domain and elements. The queen of hearts to the piano’s ace of spades, these are chosen as. And yet, blushingly ripe May blueberries are found in this one of the songwriter’s trusted guitars, and a woolen-thick honey-whiskey and purest sugar coated sage enveloping the piano keys. Olive-oil and clementine verses, choruses and bridge folding as cream into each other. Sounding like butter-yellow custard with the most whimsical of fairytale sweetnesses. Carrying the dreaminess of a velvet American flag; of cinnamon-sugared graham crackers and father-inherited roller skates; of an heirloom piano and rose-blooming and blushing light strings, that glide like a sister’s beloved and a long-sought-after hand-me-down. Bleachers’ world as of now, is rightfully softly and gently blanketed in an American flag, of Georgian-cherry gingham and Johnny Cash’s sheet pages and diaries – Jack’s promising ode to his bride falls perfectly into place here.
The romance of star-matched his and hers cherry-cola bottles feels like it is at last, in the heart of its true home. Soaring upon a wood-nymph’s ballet, with dropped Arcadian wildflowers along the winding, winking star-drenched road of highway 66 and waking up in the morning light to farmer’s market strawberry-jam-cuddling cornmeal-yellow buttermilk waffles, making home. Of this, of “Tiny Moves’” music video, a classic-Hollywood starlet Margaret Qualley is the Snow Queen in laughter-loving Aphrodite’s linen dress, her fluttering hems gracing the song itself. The song itself of cheeks, nose and ears a ruby-rose red, and crinkling, like a soon-to-walking deer’s ears. This song, and the moments of its writing and creating, hidden from the eyes of hunters and their poison arrows. A cottage hidden by robin-red sugar-maple trees and thick amber-topaz trunked pines is, at the end of the day, where the spirit of and this storyline takes place – honey sweet banana muffins crusted in oat crumble and brown sugar, fresh from the oven, coating, perfuming, the air around. Finding this one, quiet alcove helps one lovesick-poet to put into words the rays of autumnal sunlight of the enchanting, confusing, purely magical-foreign-twin flame: “The tiniest moves you make / Watching the whole world change /…The tiniest twist of fate / The tiniest moves you make.” Bleachers, Antonoff’s own, orchestra-hearted senior album, wins the gold for the story that the conductor has been searching for over his path as an artist – whether he was truly aware of this yearning or not.
