Interview: Bleachers - how to leave your hometown and survive.
Jack Antonoff is showing me an X-ray scan of his entire body - he’s just come hurtling through the door of the operations office at his adopted home, Electric Lady Studios, and tardy from his annual doctor’s physical, he brandishes a stack of official-looking documents at me as proof of his whereabouts. Incredibly animated and with no cognisance of the absurdity currently unfolding, Antonoff calls out "Jack" and his assistant, also called Jack, swiftly appears in response as a second act. After both Jacks clarify for my benefit that neither is attempting an existential cry for help, Antonoff's train of thought for the next hour then proceeds to rollercoaster from wanting to know what I ate for dinner last night to trying to dial in via FaceTime an unknown associate to prove a point to me. This is my multiverse of madness: Antonoff is skipping stones on a chilly New York afternoon and I'm stuck in a different dimension struggling to even understand what's going on.
What does make sense to me, however, is the realisation that every second of Antonoff's life is a movie - having observed the self-declared "New Jersey's finest New Yorker" grow into his own over the last 7 years as the most jacked up Jack-Antonoff-version of Jack Antonoff that anyone could possibly ever even dream to be. He's hyper, he's switched on, he's constantly processing - and it all requires you to be extremely present in a way that is rare, and not just in interviews or casual conversations. It's not normal for people to care this much, but Antonoff does. He's shown up today because his band Bleachers is incredibly important to him, and over the course of two days at Electric Lady, Antonoff's entire being is focused intensely on making sure I don't miss anything - he shows me a rooftop plaque commemorating the spot where he fell in love with his (now) wife Margaret Qualley, he points out interesting memorabilia to me (like a stick gifted to him from Clairo's dog), and gently scolds me when I'm distracted and miss a comedic bit he'd been doing. I'm genuinely trying my best to witness him, but it's hard to keep up when we can't even go to Washington Square Park for a few minutes without Antonoff being heckled ("Urkel!") by a random stranger for wearing his trousers too high. You might think that this is what Antonoff deserves, perhaps, his just deserts for daring to fly so close to the sun as the world's most in-demand producer, but at the end of the day, no one is meaner to Jack Antonoff than himself ("No one thinks I deserve much," he says wryly when I suggest that he doesn't deserve any gifts this holiday season for having not yet made good on a promise to me for a headline Bleachers tour in New Zealand).
Click here to order our new limited-edition CDM x Bleachers zines (i.e. mini-magazines featuring photos / Q&A from this cover-story).
Months prior, I'd been pleasantly surprised when Antonoff appeared on-stage during Taylor Swift's first night at MetLife Stadium on her Eras Tour, joining her to perform 'Getaway Car' as an acoustic surprise song. In front of my eyes, an entire stadium roared in recognition of Antonoff specially acknowledging his beloved home state of New Jersey (whose official state vegetable, the tomato, has been commandeered by him as a symbol for all things Bleachers), but that's just one aspect of his public-facing big life as only the second person in history to ever consecutively win non-classical Producer Of The Year at the Grammy Awards three years running. His production credits are scored into culture, but those who know Antonoff best know that Bleachers is the creed by which his world actually revolves - and when he sings "make it Bleachers" on the band's new self-titled album in 'Jesus Is Dead', it's a nod to the shared understanding that Antonoff has with his 'people' and that everything in their safe space is a celebratory in-joke. Bleachers is Antonoff's vehicle for connecting with like-minded folk, and here, outsiders are inconsequential.
"Does anyone leave their hometown and actually survive?" wonders Antonoff on new album zenith, 'We're Gonna Know Each Other Forever' - an age-old, classic Bleachers question that cuts to the feeling. Yearning to be part of something bigger than himself, 2024 Antonoff is hopeful, having finally shaken himself wide awake from the in-between dream state of his 2017 sophomore album 'Gone Now', and blown an escape hatch out of 2021's emotional 'Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night' armour. Real-life magic is following a gut feeling and trusting yourself, but that's easier said than done, and on this fourth Bleachers instalment, Antonoff continues to wrestle a life-long crux of feeling misunderstood ("Unreliable reporter / pop music hoarder" he jests in lead single, 'Modern Girl') - reckoning with his own mythology whilst learning how to move in the world at no personal cost to himself. And maybe that's the true value of Bleachers: solidarity for people who just want to feel alive ("Here I am, a tribute living man" he declares on the Florence Welch co-written 'Self Respect').
Today, we are back in Antonoff's inner sanctum - Studio D on the third floor of Electric Lady - and surrounded by what he refers to as his "artifacts", in a cozy magpie’s nest with treasured memories and mementos adorning every bit of available wall space. Pointing at his friends on the walls, Antonoff explains how he wants his new Coup De Main zines to feel like you're in his studio with him - bonus context to help those he cares most about empathise with him better, and a reflection of the studio's own storied main character energy. Outside of these walls, Antonoff is a pop music shark to the uninformed, but here within our glow of mutual understanding, his impassioned monologuing makes perfect sense to me today. Known by many, but seen only by his people, it's really not complicated: Jack Antonoff is just a man that cares.
BLEACHERS - JACK ANTONOFF: How are you doing? I'm so sorry I'm late - I had a physical, where the doctor goes through your whole life.
COUP DE MAIN: What's the report?
JACK: So far, so good.
CDM: No fear of dying within the next hour? <looks at report> Wow, that's very thorough.
JACK: I wouldn't say in the next hour, but for every day of my life... Sorry to keep you waiting though. Do you do that? Like, once a year doctor [physical]? You guys should! Do you not do it for specific reasons?
CDM: I don't like seeing my doctor because every time I see her, she's like: 'Have you thought about having a less stressful job?' And I'm like: 'Well, I would love to have a less stressful job... but such is life.'
JACK: Same. That was kind of the big theme of today: 'All your issues are work-related.'
CDM: You once told me that you don't break promises, but I've been waiting for a headline Bleachers show in New Zealand for far too long now... you're officially a liar.
JACK: I feel like my life has caught up with me and I have no excuse. What the fuck happened? Okay, you want the real honest answer? I'll tell you what happened: the pandemic happened! It totally changed touring. New Zealand's my absolute favourite place and I've spent a lot of time there. I mean, that one show with Paramore was great, but it wasn't our show. I will say this: If I play Australia and I don't play New Zealand; I'm a piece of shit. But no, I have no excuse. This time: I really promise.
CDM: Your debut Bleachers album, 'Strange Desire', began with the spoken intro: "I want to be grateful, I really wanna be grateful..." How does it feel to look back on that sentiment almost a decade later?
JACK: I just started thinking about this because someone just told me that it was 10 years coming up and it's really weird because it's one of those things that feels so long and so short all at once. I definitely never dreamed the band would have the audience that we have had. And I'm not being humble, just all the bands I have had my whole life, from Outline to Steel Train, we always had these very small hardcore fanbases. And Bleachers feels like it has a big cult fanbase, but the feeling is the same. I don't want to get ahead of myself because you might touch on this later, but the big reason why the album is self-titled is because something kind of grew in the band where all of a sudden I felt like we had this big group of people coming into the shows but it still felt really intimate somehow - like everyone knew every joke and every reference of everything. It's really hard to look back... I don't know yet; I'm just starting to. At that time, my favourite part about 'Strange Desire' was a very hyperrealistic version of what making albums is - like, you dream about it, right? So even if I'm making an album, like this last Bleachers album where I know we have an audience, right? I'm still in this space, either alone, or with the band. And then I'm dreaming about what it will be like. And 'Strange Desire' was the ultimate version of that because I literally had no band and I had no record deal. I think a lot of people try to make it seem like, 'Oh, we didn't know if anyone would care at that time,' and I still obviously feel that way - every time I make an album, there is a part of me that feels like I'm starting from zero - but I know who our audience is now. When I was making 'Strange Desire', there was zero audience - truly, truly zero. And so it was the most basic/core version of the feeling that I still have making an album, which is that you're truly just making it for yourself, and then imagining what could come of it.
CDM: In 2017, you told Coup De Main about your work: "It's about making music that reflects what it's actually like to be alive." Do you still feel that way?
JACK: Any given song can sound really peppy, but really depressing. The experience of being alive is: I'm thinking about my family, I'm thinking about the holidays, I'm thinking about mortality, I've been thinking about grief, thinking things about death, and 10 seconds later I'm thinking about food. Your brain just moves so quickly, through the course of not even a day, or even an hour, let alone a minute. If you think about the amazing gamut of things that you think about juggling at once, I always want the songs to feel like that. I don't want my songs to be escapism, as much as I want them to be a reflection of how we talk and how we think - and when I say we: I mean my people.
CDM: And with Bleachers specifically, there's that internal compass always in search of finding your 'people'.
JACK: Yeah, I've always felt that way, and sometimes people have a hard time understanding. One of the funny things about having success, or objective success, however people quantify that, is you in many ways get stripped of people assuming that you might feel really misunderstood. But if you don't have any objective success, it's very easy for people to imagine you to be misunderstood - and that's how I have felt my whole life. But then if you have some kind of objective success, everyone's like, 'Congratulations, you must be so happy that everyone loves the album!' Well, yeah, but there's a lot more to it. And 99% of my time, I go through my life feeling really misunderstood, and that's actually the reason why I write music - because there's something that feels misunderstood to me that I want to share and then I want to find other people who feel that way. So a large part of time, I feel misunderstood, and then when I'm with my people at a show, or if I recognise them online, then I feel like we're in a small club together. But it is funny how it still comes from that place, even though people kind of recognise it less and less as you appear to have more success.
CDM: It's so fun being an anxious person...
JACK: It kind of is. I mean, at least it's interesting, right?
CDM: I was listening to the new album while alone at the house of some friends in Los Angeles while they were at work last week. I only had their dog to talk to during the daytime, and I felt like I was rattling around their house with only your new album to communicate with. After a very intense few days of only listening to Bleachers songs, I've decided that Bleachers songs are what happens when you shake someone to hear what's inside - like if you pick up a present and rattle it.
JACK: Oh I like this; I love that.
CDM: That's my thesis statement.
JACK: That's perfect. That's how I feel. I've been saying something that's not as good as what you said. When someone asks me about my favourite songs that I've written, I'll say, 'Oh, it's this song.' And they say, 'Why?' And it's because I feel like if you opened me up, that's the music that would play. But what you said is way more poetic.
CDM: You can steal it and then I'll sue you later.
JACK: Yes! Just sue me now to get ahead of it.
CDM: In the home that houses all of the music that you've ever made, where does the self-titled Bleachers album fit in? What part of the house is it?
JACK: Right now, it's a den or a family room. 'Strange Desire' was a bedroom, and 'Gone Now' was a basement or an attic. 'Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night' was the roof. This one feels like the family room - it feels very conversational. There's something more welcoming about this album, even though there's a lot of darkness on it. I don't know why I feel that way, I just feel like there's something open about it - like the reason why it's self-titled is because it's open. And in addition to all the themes of grief and looking at loss through the lens of a different age, for the first time in my life, there's other pieces, and I always felt too ashamed to do that, like I wasn't honouring people that were gone if I wrote about anything else. And something about that just makes it feel a little bit more like people are welcome. Like a family room.
CDM: When I think about all four Bleachers albums, each one feels very transportive - they each transport the listener to a very specific time in your life. What is it like for you to have these time capsules to look back on? That are not only public records, but also narratives you re-engage with every time you perform live with your band - connecting your past and future, to the present?
JACK: Super fucked up. I think that's the thing about tour that you've got to be careful about - music transports you to a time and can transport you to a feeling and a state of mind. It's very rare, and that's a good thing. Celebrating it, writing about it or talking about it, or exercising it is a good thing. But if I think about songs like 'Everybody Lost Somebody' and I think about the place I have to put myself in to perform that song, I have to be really careful to not get a little lost in it. There's a difference between talking about something and reliving it, and I think a lot of times in the songs they sort of force you to relive it, like even 'I Wanna Get Better' which we play all the time. It's an anthemic song, but there's so many lyrics in there that I--
CDM: Some of them are dark.
JACK: Yeah, very. And even if it's for a split second, I kinda have to relive the person who wrote that, and where I was. Actually, Bruce Springsteen had a great quote about this. He's someone whom I confide in a lot about concerns of this work because I think he's done it so beautifully, and he had a great metaphor where he said, "It's like you're driving, and you have all your past selves in the backseat and they're not controlling the wheel, but you can call on them whenever you need." I liked that imagery because it made me feel like no one else takes the wheel except current me, but I can still call on this person who's way more fucked up, or me at 23 who's this, or 27 at this, and I like that imagery a lot. I wouldn't say I struggle with it, but I would say I think about it a lot, like how to balance and re-live enough to honour the songs, but also make sure I'm not going to get lost in the sauce.
CDM: A running theme throughout the Bleachers back-catalogue is you perpetually being in motion - from running away in 'Rollercoaster' to chasing every feeling in 'Chinatown'. And on this new album, you're still chasing and driving... are you scared to be stationary?
JACK: Yes.
CDM: Why?
JACK: I don't know... that's something I've thought about my whole life. Part of it is really intellectualising, and you think about it, like I'm trying to do now... and then part of it's just involuntary. There's also just themes that come out of me; I've always wanted to leave. I blamed it on New Jersey a lot. I blamed it on grief and loss a lot. But I don't know what it is. It's probably also something that is just in me. I was watching the Joan Rivers documentary, and I related so much to the way she was filling up her schedule - I just want to go and go and then go and then go, and then I also want to rest, but the parts that I blamed on New Jersey make sense of being outside of the party wanting to get out. That makes sense to me, and some of the things that happened when I was younger may make it understandable to me that I'd want to run away. I think it goes back to that feeling of being generally misunderstood - you want to get out and find your people, which is why I love writing songs so much, because you do chuck them out into the world and there's that crazy feeling anytime you release a song, let alone an album, where you imagine it getting shot out into the world. You're like: 'Who's going to hear this?!' A young person, old person, this person, or that person... whoever is going to hear this and feel something that is really connected, and then we're connected in this funny way. I still have a tonne of motion - I'm always trying to go here/there, and I was at the doctor, and I was racing to come here, and then I'm gonna do something tonight, and motion makes me think of songs. It makes me think of ideas. But it is very often wrapped up in leaving, it's not always like the sweetest concept.
CDM: On the last Bleachers album, 'Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night', you pictured yourself standing at the doorway to your future, carrying the heavy weight of your life experiences, and unable to pass through without leaving parts of your emotional baggage behind. Do you feel like you've managed to walk through that doorway now? On this new self-titled Bleachers album, you seem more at peace?
JACK: I blew through the doorway! Like, aggressively smashed through the doorway. That's why this album is self-titled - there's something about getting married and finding your person, and the band growing into this kind of unstoppable force. We all have this mythology and story about ourselves, right? Like, 'Oh, I'm bad in relationships... I'm this, I'm that.' And then even the things that make you really sad, you start to wear them as armour. But then something really positive happens in your life, and it's amazing, but it also challenges all the things you thought about yourself. So this just felt like blowing up the whole cage, or the whole room. It's also the first time that it feels like only my band and my life are the reference point for everything. On 'Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night', I was like: 'Where do I go? What do I do?' There was a song called 'One More Step' which didn't make the album - I was just listening back to it because it came on shuffle - and it has this lyric: "I think everybody's been right here / Can't take a step, can't turn back / I think everybody has been stuck right here." The whole song was about trying to take one step and it's such a sad song. I don't feel that way at all anymore.
CDM: You did it. You did it!!
JACK: Well, I don't know what I did. But I'm not there. I've done something.
CDM: The idea of home, and feelings of home, have always been so instrumental in your work, and in 'We Are Going To Know Each Other Forever' on this new album, you ask: "Does anyone leave their hometown and actually survive?" Have you figured out an answer to that yet?
JACK: No, but what I mean by that is: "Does anyone move into the world and retain themselves?" I think about it all the time. It's one of my favourite lyrics on the album - actually it's probably my favourite song on the album. It's a very strange song, but it's going to be one of those ones like 'Foreign Girls' where there'll be 20 kids right in front who will be screaming for it every night - and then we'll play it and they'll get it. But my whole feeling on that song is: 'This is it.' These are my friends, this is my world, this is my family, this is my life - we're gonna know each other forever. I mean it as much to my inner circle as I mean to my audience, and the whole journey of the song is coming to that feeling of when you look around and it's like you're a kid in high school and everyone starts to drift apart. How old are you?
CDM: 35.
JACK: So when you look around, you're not often like: 'Wow, everyone's great!' You're more often like: 'Well, so and so's addicted to drugs, so and so's dead, so and so is okay but doesn't seem to really like their life, so and so seems good but really stressed out...' And I didn't grow up thinking that. I grew up with maybe 50s mythology from my parents, but I just grew up thinking that everyone gets to have a nice life - and it's just not true. You start to realise that everyone leaves their hometown, whatever that means, literally or just after a certain age, and then splinters off. When we're younger, we're on this even playing field where not much is expected of you and you just have to sort of show up - and when you're young, very few horrible things happen. But then when everyone splinters off, you sort of look around, and you're like: 'God, who actually survived this life?' But it is a hopeful song. <sings> "I mean: does anyone leave their hometown and actually hold the line? Too dumb to realise how much you meant to this place." I spent so much of my life, like you said, running and running and running, and having these little communities wherever I go, but I also often wonder what would have happened if I just stayed. And then at the end of the song, I try to wrap it up and yell, literally the hardest I have screamed in any one song. 'We Are Going To Know Each Other Forever'... it's at this strange community that I found myself in, which is probably better than anything I grew up with, but it makes me think a lot. When I was writing this song, I had this weird feeling: I was looking around and everyone's so fucked up, not the world, just in my own life, but everyone's got so many problems and it takes so much to get out of bed in the morning. How weird.
CDM: I want to tell you about a 2006 study in which an experiment was done where teachers took their preschool children to a local playground in which there was no fence. The same group was also taken to a similar playground in which there was a defined border designated by a fence.
JACK: I feel like I know what's going to happen...
CDM: In the first scenario, the children remained huddled around their teacher, fearful of going out of her sight, but the second scenario exhibited drastically different results, with the children feeling free to explore within the given boundaries. The conclusion was that: with a given limitation, children felt safer to explore, but without a fence, the children were not able to see a given boundary or limit and thus were more reluctant to leave the caregiver.
JACK: I am a child.
CDM: With a boundary, in this case, the fence, the children felt at ease to explore the space. They were able to separate from the caregiver and continue to develop their sense of self while still recognising that they were in a safe environment within the limits of the fence. The findings of that study feels to me reminiscent of the Bleachers quest to feel at home - that it's impossible to navigate complicated feelings if you feel adrift to sea, but if you can see land on the horizon, then it's easier to conduct that search for home more comfortably and successfully... I mean, you literally took your childhood bedroom on tour with you!
JACK: Well, I love that - it's good that you're bringing it up right now. I mean, I'm in the studio and I have just become so inspired by limitations. I think about it like food a lot. Like, if I had a restaurant, and I made this thing that is a fusion of Mexican food and South African food, and then also French and Indian food, as a student, you'd be like: "Whoah, this is crazy!" But what if I was like: "Is this the best pizza you'll ever have?" Like, why is that? Why do we look for the best bagel? Or the best pizza? The best, but not the most inspired song or movie. If you actually think about the form of things, like disrupting/intentional use - because a lot of people who claim to be disrupting are just sort of breaking something to remake it in its own image and make money along the way - there's only so many forms. Even if you think about the studio: there's the piano, and there's a lot of synthesisers, but they kind of all revolve in the same world - you have your Junos and your Jupiters and your Moogs, and Mellotron and Prophets, but there's not 40 synthesisers that you have to have, you can kind of get the sound from a few things. And there's drums - there's the LinnDrum, there's the 808, but when you really think about the palette, the limitations of being in the studio are so incredibly fascinating: because why is it that you hear recordings with guitar, bass, drums, and a Juno (which I love) on it, and we've heard so many recordings like that, but why does this one sound totally different? And why does that one sound totally different? And there's only so many notes or chords. But why is this song that I just heard this morning feel like something I've never heard before? And I feel so inspired. Like, a show is a show, right? You go, and then someone plays for one or two hours, or maybe a little more, right? Why is it that some nights feel totally different? And then other nights feel like: 'Yeah, I'm at a show!' People love to imagine art as this sort of boundaryless concept, and in many ways, I feel like that's how a lot of the most boring things are made. This idea of finite space, whether it's an album, or a palette of instruments, or just the themes in terms of the band and what I do, I'm always just looking to shock myself - like you said, within the playground. There's something that feels easy about harsh pivots or going to outer space and back, but I want to be in my band, I want to be in my studio, I want to be with my audience and find things that are drilling further. That's a huge thing I've been talking about lately: going further into relationships in my production work, and the band already feels like it's going further and further and further. There's no hard left here, or hard right there. We're straight up in the air. This album is not 30 minutes of cellos and screaming, this is just finding new ground within where it's the hardest and most familiar space.
CDM: "My mind is mirrors / Don’t know what is and what’s reflection," you say in this new album's opening song, 'I Am Right On Time', which is classic Bleachers - always trying to get to the heart of what is real.
JACK: These are all my favourite lyrics you're quoting.
CDM: What's the most real thing you learnt about yourself in the process of making this new album?
JACK: How much I love the people around me. And to kind of touch on something you said: how much I can run around the world and everyone can come with me and it can be a community, but also how hard I've worked to have a life and how exhausted and angry I am at a lot of the things that get in the way. It's like a video game, and your anxieties and your depression are these characters - and the more I go through it, the more not scared and sad I am, but the more angry I am. I feel really angry and exhausted by it; I'm fucking done with it. That line reminds me of the kind of shit that I hate, like this duality of me living in this sort of anxious place of not knowing what is or what's reflection. So in that song, I say: "The future’s past, I’m right on time." 'I Am Right On Time' feels a little bit like 'We Are Going To Know Each Other Forever' - for once in my life, a few songs on this album are like that, where I'm presenting a really bad part of myself, but in the same song I'm saying no. And I think that's a powerful place. I've had that experience a few times in my life, when you go from fucked up to scared, sad, depressed, to vulnerable, but when you get angry it's really cool, because that's when you're like: 'Fuck this, I'm tired of this part of myself.' If you can hold anger in the right place, it isn't self-hatred, it's a separation from this part of yourself that is really mean to yourself.
CDM: That's so healthy of you.
JACK: I don't know if it's healthy, but it led to some good songs. It was just what I was feeling.
CDM: From "all my heroes got tired" in 'All My Heroes', to "KILL YOUR IDOLS in the street outside in daylight" in 'Alma Mater', you seem to have a complicated relationship with your heroes. How does that affect your relationship with your own fame and fanbase?
JACK: Big time. It's really complicated because the more people that see you, the harder and the more tempting it is to just sort of project yourself, rather than be yourself. Especially with the way the internet works, people are so gleeful to find what they consider to be inconsistencies. If I'm myself out there, then it's messy, and I get hurt. If I project myself, then I can protect myself, but then I can feel dissonant. So I don't do that. It's a really weird time. We live in this time where publicly, it's like, choose your own ending: 'Do I want to be in touch with people who see me? I know where to find them... Do I want to be in touch with people who are critical of me? I know where I can find them.' You could find anything. So it's weird as an artist because you want to be fully aware, culturally, of everything that's going on, but I've also reached this point where I - and also every artist I know, and every person I know too - feel so much intense negativity. But what is the pool? Is it nine-year-olds? Is it bots? And that's why I love being on tour so much - because it's such a real place. When someone comes to a show and they yell something at me, whatever it is, a song request or a joke or a real thought, it's very real and I really hear it. I think we're living in a really interesting time where I can speak for myself and feel the experience of being an artist, but we're starting to really shift our thinking into understanding that the internet is not necessarily the cultural conversation - it's just exactly what it is. It almost feels like a dirty street where everyone's just flying by, screaming things back and forth. I don't like when I feel good when I read nice things. And I don't like when I feel bad when I read bad things because I don't know what the fuck it is. And it's really caused me to want to be on tour as much as possible because it's a space where: well, first of all, I love the barrier of entry; I love the fact that myself, my band, my crew, and the audience all had to go through quite a lot to be there. It automatically creates a space that is a hell of a lot less bullshit because everyone wants to be there. And I just want to be places where people want to be because I feel like so much of the world right now is all these places where no one wants to be - like, no one wants to be on Instagram, right? It's a means to an end, and there's good things about it, but no one wants to be on Twitter, it's also a means to an end. It's like airplanes: you don't want to be on the airplane, but you want to travel, and you're not dying to be on this airplane and breathe recycled air and eat shit food. And I feel like this thing has happened, where there's so many places like that in the world, where no one actually wants to be, but we kind of have to be, that I feel like I've spent a lot of the past two years seriously redirecting my faith and my time. That's why my favourite places are - if I'm not with my wife, or family, or friends - truly with people, and loving the studio, or on tour, because everything else melts away. Like, nothing fucking matters because I'm doing something that I think is so much more important. So if I feel like I'm not doing those really important things, then I get the Jones to get back to the bad place. It's a really interesting time for all people because we're all aware of it, and we weren't always - there used to be like, net positive, net negative, this or that. I feel like for the first time, no matter where you sit, politically or culturally, no one would be like: my phone is the best thing that's ever happened; it's perfect. No one thinks that.
CDM: I've been thinking a lot lately about how society has shifted away from prioritising empathy as a way of meaningfully connecting and engaging with other humans, when online conversations have a tendency to be one-sided - on social media you're either yelling into the void, or you're reacting in a parasocial way as an audience.
JACK: Tendency?! But arguably, even if you're talking to a friend, arguably like even what you said, they're not even really conversations - a conversation is not me writing something on a wall and then you coming in, right? That's two people yelling at things at a wall in a conversational manner, but it's not a conversation because the heart and soul of a conversation is understanding this sort of give and take of humanity.
CDM: Exactly. In conversations, the sharing of stories is sort of transactional but it benefits both people. We don't have conversations anymore; communication has been reduced to interactions. Do you think humans are becoming more or less empathetic?
JACK: I think they're yearning for more empathy - I don't think we're becoming more or less empathetic, I think we're out of practice, but I also have so much hope. I'm not saying: 'Oh, fuck this, the world's fucked.' It's sort of a brilliant moment, like, look at vinyl, right? They're selling more vinyl now than they did in 1975 - literal proof that the structure of capitalism doesn't mean anything. We don't live in a world that accounts for the dip, everything has to be ultimate growth, right? I make records with other artists who are very big artists, but no one can print enough vinyl in enough time because they closed all the machines and they closed all the factories - it's the most perfect example or metaphor for the time we live in. In a short 20-year-period, we decided an industry was over, and then we decided the industry is bigger than ever. The same thing is gonna happen with movie theatres. The same thing's gonna happen with print and things like that. There's always been this capitalist insanity in the world we live in, but this feels like the first time we're all starting to grow out of buying into it. I think Kanye was one of the people who fucked that up because he was one of the first artists who was like Richard Branson / the GOAT, blah blah blah, this/that, and at the time he was making good work, so it felt connected. But it's not normal for every artist to be selling many, many, many things besides their music. That's not normal. It's not normal for everyone who is in the arts to have a fashion campaign or aspiring fashion campaign. These aren't normal things. What the fuck do I know about selling you your pants?
CDM: You're my favourite pants seller.
JACK: <laughs> But I'm not someone who is opposed to people doing more than one thing - obviously, I am a singer and artist, and songwriter, and I'm also a producer. But it doesn't mean that I get to be the person who tells you what glasses you should wear because I happen to wear glasses and I happen to be famous. But that is the time we live in. So the bummer part is it's taking the art out of the thing because some people really do love that. Like, look at Tyler, the Creator - that guy is a fucking genius with clothes. That guy was put on this earth to make music, produce music, rap, and make clothes. And frankly, architecture. Some people really do this. But the field gets so muddy, and I think this is the big question artistically of our time, is 'can' vs. 'should'. Everything is 'can' now - you can do anything. You could have a sock collection, you could have this, you could have that. One of the coolest things in the world is Hayley [Williams] having her hair dye stuff because even if she wasn't my friend, through all the years of just watching her, I know that she loves that stuff and I know that she's passionate about it. I know that she's an artist when it comes to how she presents herself, so that's cool. But then there's a million other people who have 'you can do this, you can do this...' And as someone in my position, it's crazy the things people bring to you. You could have so many different things. Skincare has practically become celebrity money laundering. I think we're gonna drift back into a place where it's really precious to ask people to pay attention to something, let alone buy something, and that's why I love live so much. It's fucking hard to buy a ticket these days, right? You feel like a piece of livestock the way they treat you when you're buying a ticket, so if I'm gonna put people through that and if I'm gonna put people through parking... I know how much money is worth nowadays when we all get to the show. I hate what these institutions have done to the world but I feel really confident that this is all worth it. From the way that my crew gets paid, to the way that the person has to buy the ticket, I really believe in it. And I'm not advocating for sellout culture to come back, but it'd be nice if there was a little bit more like: 'Why are you selling me pants?' This is controversial, but I think Gwyneth Paltrow is kind of sick because I at least believe her. I'm not buying it, literally, but I believe her that she's passionate.
CDM: I can't wait for the Jack Antonoff-designed Bleachers garden benches collection.
JACK: I have no passion for it. And I'll let you know if I do have a passion for anything, but at this point, it just feels, much like the songs: I'm actually saying anything is hopeful. I really feel like we're having a full, quiet cultural revolt against all of the trappings of the future. Like, don't you see people going to movies more? The curve is not going down. I remember, like, five/six years ago, you could not fucking get anyone to go to a movie with you.
CDM: Even with our zines, I was just explaining to someone yesterday that pre-pandemic our print runs were what you'd expect from a small magazine from New Zealand, but post-pandemic our print runs have been wild.
JACK: That's what I'm saying! No one in the world has ever gone into someone's home and said: "Let me look at your playlist." But if you walk into someone's home and you see a bunch of records, you're gonna walk right over to them. Space is finite, right? So we're in this room right now, and this is Lee [Foster]'s office. That's a picture that Florence + The Machine drew, David Bowie drew that face right there, and that's Daniel Johnston. So Lee has decided that in this 100 square foot space or whatever it is, he is going to fill a very finite amount of space with really interesting drawings from great artists. If it was my office, this <points at NZ tomato> would stay here, and then people would ask me what it was, but the phone is such an insular place that it's so rare, even now-- do you have one of those screens that no one can see?
CDM: I actually did, but I just took it off because it was annoying the way it made my screen so dark.
JACK: Okay, but do you remember early cell phone days? You would be like: 'Look, look, look!' But now? No one looks at my phone. Would you ever let someone go through your camera roll? Never! And if someone gave me their phone to go through the camera roll, I'd be like: 'Ahhhh!' This is just a really interesting part of our time. We let a bunch of tech capitalists tell us... have you ever been to any of these tech cities like Palo Alto or parts of Austin? I had a real interesting thought while I was there recently and looking around. This will sound very critical and it's intended to be, but I was like: what all these people do is amazing, I can't understand it, it's not what I do, but these are the people that we're letting define the future?! They're not that qualified. It just feels like a weird wrinkle in time. But once again, I'm really, really hopeful. Your zines! Shows are bigger than ever! And people are going to movies! I just feel like there's this collective revolt of--
CDM: The people know what they want.
JACK: They do, but also it's important to realise that we're living in the first time in human history that technological advancement is getting an actual-- not like when the microwave came out and people were like it causes cancer, and it didn't. Like, how many people you know died from the microwave, right? It's fine. This is the first time that everyone's like: 'Whoah, no.' Like, how many people do you know that don't update their phone anymore?
CDM: Just you - one person.
JACK: It's fucked up. You don't know people that do this?! Because your phone strokes out and you have to buy a new phone. I just think it's fucking cool to watch people push back at the future that we're being sold.
CDM: 'Me Before You' and 'Tiny Moves' both detail how someone important can really change your life. Do you believe in love at first sight? Or do you think it's more of a gradual thing as you get to know someone better?
JACK: I believe in love at first sight. I experienced it.
CDM: On a rooftop? And she was wearing white? I've heard the Lana song...
JACK: Are you there tomorrow? We're shooting, right? I'll show you - there's a little plaque right there. Lee who owns the studio made a little plaque that says "when you know, you know" right in the spot. I'll show it to you; it's sweet. The funny thing with that Lana song is that when we were writing it, she goes: "The party is December 18." I was like: "What?!" She goes: "I don't know!" I thought it was kind of cool because we were definitely not getting married on December 18 and it was just a funny, classic Lana moment of just: she's gonna say whatever date she fucking wants.
CDM: 'Ordinary Heaven' is also a very reverent song. "You dance around your apartment / And I just get to be there," you say, which romanticises a very normal occurrence. On the early Bleachers albums you often presented love as the decision to love someone's shadow, and when we last spoke we discussed wearing someone else's sadness and being bored in love.
JACK: Yeah, those are called the wrong relationships.
CDM: Now that you're married to the love of your life, what does love mean to you?
JACK: That song is such a great example of how on this album I talk about my partner with joy and reverence. I talk about getting to witness someone. It's amazing how you can experience the heaviest thing in the world, like wanting to be with someone forever, but how light it can make you feel? It's funny to look back on those... I used to think love was such a struggle - a battle, loving someone's darkness.
CDM: You were very dramatic in your youth.
JACK: Very. But it's all the armour we wear - if you're not in the right relationship, you find these poetic forms to justify what it is. Like, 'I'm not always happy, but damn.. when it's hard, it's hard, but when it's good, it's so good.' But life's hard enough - should it be so hard? But you are where you are and you can't be bored your whole life, so you go through these things, and it's interesting to look back at that writing because my parents have a funny relationship, so I think I always just wanted to find my own thing and make it work. That is a beautiful thing, but I also think I had this obsession with making things work to the point where I would be screaming about loving people's shadows - but that one is still beautiful, it just wasn't right for me.
CDM: 'Don’t Go Dark' and 'Alma Mater' feel like sister songs - from Lana singing "I’ll make it darker" in 'Alma Mater' which feels like a reply to the main sentiment of 'Don’t Go Dark', to alligator tears in both songs, and your dreams also referenced in both songs. Do you knowingly link your songs together as you're writing? Or do you only realise their connections when you've finished creating?
JACK: Both. Sometimes I'm really sewing a thread, and then sometimes I'm just like: 'Okay.' I like it because there's no accidents - because it's me. One of my favourite things about making albums and writing songs is I'll have all my intentions, and they're all up on a giant whiteboard in my head, and which songs are sort of connected. I always see albums - any album I make - in a lot of pairs, like songs that are siblings to each other on albums, but then when I release stuff and I start to hear even things you're saying, I'm just like: 'Didn't look at it that way!' And it's not wrong. And often it's better than what I was thinking. Also, there's a lot of unknowingness to writing that you have to embrace. I've said this a lot, but you don't write about things that you know because they're boring. It's why there's not a lot of songs about making an egg or something. There has to be a longing or a yearning. And so I find myself writing when there's something that I don't fully understand - I start to write about it and often that means I won't understand it until other people help me understand it.
CDM: I love the Red Hearse reunion on 'Call Me After Midnight' - and the little nod to Red Hearse with the lyrics "born to bleed" in the first verse!
JACK: We're gonna do that again. We're gonna do that again soon.
CDM: A second album?!
JACK: Yeah, we've been writing. We just have to get it right.
CDM: I'm excited.
JACK: Me too.
CDM: Honestly, if you give me a New Zealand Red Hearse show, I'd forgive you for everything.
JACK: I would love it. Do you think anyone knows us there?.
CDM: I do. I'll be there.
JACK: Okay, that's one - that's great, but you're on the guest list. <laughs> Do you think anyone else will come?
CDM: I'LL BUY A TICKET, JACK!
CDM: On this new album, you've also got vocal contributions from Florence Welch, Lana Del Rey, Annie Clark, Clairo, and Claud, as well as songwriting contributions from Aaron Dessner, Kevin Abstract, Ryan Beatty, and Romil Hemani, and Matty Healy playing piano. The whole Bleachers family is here! Did you invite friends specifically to the studio? Or were they happenstance?
JACK: All happenstance. My world is a really small team of people, and it's all happening at once. I think that I fucked up in the past by describing it differently, and it's because when I was first starting Bleachers, I was really in this idea of someone who does two things - I was really like, 'These are the records I produce, and this is Bleachers, they're totally separate!!' I really preached that narrative, but it wasn't ever really true. It's always been a really fluid process, and especially now, and especially here [at Electric Lady Studios] because I work upstairs, we're just kind of all passing through and I can work on two different things in one day. Yeah, it feels like a little community.
CDM: In January of this year, you wrote: "don't tell them ur price. if you never do anything that breaks you then you don't have a price. some people actually don't. it's different for everyone but seeing that some do not have that line is a heartbreaker." What exactly did you mean by that?
JACK: Where did I write this?
CDM: On your Instagram. You posted a screenshot.
JACK: What was the date? Do you know?
CDM: It said January - maybe 2021 or 2022.
JACK: Someone must have done something. A lot of that was free association. I just felt like I wanted to get a lot of thoughts out into the world without having to stand behind them in an official capacity, so I just started writing a diary, and then I would share it because it felt like the chaotic thoughts before you're finished with an album are more important than people understanding the album. But I don't know what I was talking about specifically - maybe what I was talking about was just my ongoing rage towards the way people take advantage of their audience. Like, not everything is for sale.
CDM: Is that what "don't take the money" means to you now in 2023?
JACK: Yeah, 'Don't Take The Money' is a love song, but totally, in many ways. To be in the position of someone who gathers people, it's so vulnerable, and I don't ever want to ask things of people that I don't believe in entirely, and I never would. There's so many moments of visibility now when you're an artist, and sometimes, like, just don't fucking do that. You don't have to do that. You don't have to put yourself in that position. You don't have to debase the work and the culture.
CDM: What example comes to mind?
JACK: There's a lot of weirdo shit that goes on, like, creepy paid meet and greets.
CDM: I absolutely hate paid meet and greets. It's the bane of my life.
JACK: It's just bizarre--
CDM: Putting a price on human interaction!
CDM + JACK <at the same time>: It's insane!
JACK: It's a beautiful thing to gather people. I'm not religious, but from what I've heard about church, people are coming there with the best intentions. So, show up for them - don't squeeze every last thing you can out of them.
CDM: They're already giving you their love, why do you need their entire life savings too?
JACK: Totally. It's bizarre. And yeah, the show, we get it - you have to get there, and there's the crew, it's a balancing act. But I've thought about it a lot over the past couple of years because of everything that's gone on with the concert industry and the ticket industry. It's a place I've been in for my whole life and it's a place I love more than anything, so to watch it become something that is universally stressful and dehumanising for people, really, really fucked me up. There's always issues, right? But in the past few years, we went from 'oh, service fees are this,' to 'service fees are that,' and 'oh, my God, service fees are that,' to 'oh my God, I can't even get a ticket.' And the company who is selling the tickets has a monopoly and just sells themselves their own tickets, and you can't even buy a ticket for face value - it's a lot like voting, where you're like, 'Why is this so confusing?' And you realise why it's so confusing. It's designed to screw people, and it's designed to drive prices up. I've worked so hard in the past year, and I'm really proud of what we've been able to do, but my God, the system is so messed up. And I think the reason why it breaks my heart is because if you want to jack the prices up of fancy marble slabs, okay whatever, but something as beautiful as people going to shows? For a lot of us that's a huge part of how we stay positive and stay alive, is by getting to go to a certain amount of shows every year. And if you make that industry so much so that only people who have more money can really start going to shows... It's a great equaliser, right, if there's a venue that holds 1000 people, and let's say the ticket is $50, and let's say Person A has many $50 bills and Person B has one $50 bill, but it doesn't matter if either of them buy the ticket. It's so much harder for Person B than it is for Person A, but once they walk in that room, they're the same person, and we're all at the show together. And I love that! That's why I hate seated venues because I don't like the stacking of it. And when you go to a festival and there's the VIP thing in front of the stage, like, what the fuck?! Let me tell you something straight up as an artist: you know who I want in front of the stage? It's not the richest person. First of all, I just want the biggest fans, but most of the time the biggest fans are just the real people living in the world who have to work really hard to afford those tickets - and then when they go, the show is that much more important. And I'm more in touch with them because we're going crazy to get to that show: we're flying and we're on buses, and we're here and we're there, and we're in this city and that city, we're living a really wild life to tour, and so it feels kind of fucked up when someone in the front row like three hours before the concert went on some website and paid $5,000 for the tickets. I'm repeating myself, but I've thought so much about it this past year: 'Man, the world's so fucked up, please don't, not here - don't do this here.' Don't turn a show into a free market.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Polaroids by: Coup De Main
The new self-titled Bleachers album is out now.
Watch the 'Tiny Moves' music video below...
