Bleachers front man Antonoff a fan of retro, avant-garde
Spend any amount of time speaking with Jack Antonoff, and one comes away with the impression that he’s an all-around music guy who’s as much a historian and fan as he is a touring and recording veteran.
In addition to leading his own Bleachers project, the New Jersey native is also one-third of the successful band fun. and a co-founder of the late Drive-Thru Records band Steel Train.
Bleachers’ debut album, “Strange Desire” (released a year ago by RCA), is filled with inspiration from the New Wave and technopop sounds of the 1980s.
[...] in 2004, Steel Train released the “1969” EP of covers of songs from the titular year.
“That was just the music that I was really into at the time,” says Antonoff, of the half dozen classic covers found on “1969” that range from the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” to David Bowie’s Space Oddity.
En route to Boston to catch a flight for a few European festival dates, he’ll return stateside for a 14-city co-headlining run with Charli XCX.
Antonoff says he knows the rising British pop star and songwriter through various award ceremonies and festivals.
Vince Clarke (Erasure, Depeche Mode) added keyboards and additional programming and production work, while Yoko Ono contributed to the song “I’m Ready to Move On.”
“I work with a lot of special people in my life, but I’ve never gotten to work with someone who’s so directly linked to some of the songs I’ve written,” he says of Clarke.
“There are all these holes in the songs that I didn’t know were there that he filled,” he notes.
[...] this tour, which is the final part of the album cycle, feels like a celebration of an ending.
“I never wanted to be one of those musicians who, live, is like, ‘Look at all of these things I can play!’ I almost feel like there’s a kind of weird energy to that,” he says.