SOUNDTRACK: BLEACHERS-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #235 (July 12, 2021).
People love Jack Antonoff and Bleachers. I feel like I’m supposed to be blown away by him, but I’m not. In fact I thought that I had seen him live, but it was actually Porches (not the same thing but sort of similar).
Both as producer extraordinaire and artist in his own right, Jack Antonoff has had an outsized impact on the past decade in pop. And yet, even with such maximalist aims, Antonoff clearly understands the effectiveness of scale: that the most enduring tracks are often intimate portraits.
Surrounded by greenery, the footage is interspersed with close-up angles filtered through an old-school finish (scan the wide shot and you’ll spy a video camera perched on the piano, plus one very tiny desk, too).
They play three songs.
The set opens with “91,” the album’s ambitious opening cut.
The songs opens with the two saxophone players standing really close to each other (where’s the social distancing guys?). This song is a kind of story song with a lot of words. The whole presentation reminds me a lot of Tom Waits (no bad thing) or Bruce Springsteen (which I guess makes more sense since Bruce sang on a song of his).
It’s followed by a bombastic revision of “Stop Making This Hurt,” which gets a slick saxophone rewrite courtesy of Zem Audu and Evan Smith.
“Stop Making This Hurt” opens in an interesting way with staccato sax from (l-r) Zem Audu and Evan Smith while Antonoff stabs some piano notes. I suppose I would like this more if it didn’t sound exactly as it does. Piano and sax are really just not my thing and that’s pretty much all these songs have. Mikey Freedom Hart adds keys, but it’s mostly bass notes adding depth to the song.
Springsteen sings on the studio version of “Chinatown.” Interestingly I felt like this version sounded more like Meatloaf than anything else. Musically I enjoyed this song and Antonoff seems like a nice guy, but I’ll not be seeing Bleachers anytime soon.
[READ: July 15, 2021] “Old Faithful”
This essays opens with David finding a lump on his tailbone–never a happy discovery. It was a cyst or a boil–“one of those words you associate with trolls.”
Just sitting hurt him–and forget about laying down. He threatened that boil–“I’m going to go to a doctor if you don’t go away.” It didn’t listen.
He says he didn’t go to the doctor because it would have been very expensive in London (really? Don’t they have NHS?). But mostly he was afraid of hearing that he had “lower-back cancer” and they’d have to “remove his entire bottom.”
He suffered with the pain believing he was setting a good example for Hugh who tends to moan and complain–a splinter gets into his hand and he claims to know how Jesus Christ felt.
When they both had a stomach bug at the same time they tried to outdo each other with who was feeling worse–you hoped as a matter of principle that you’d die first just to show him.
This makes him think back to his first boyfriend whose mother always sought attention. She would schedule a mammogram for the holidays knowing she wouldn’t get the results until after Christmas. This would allow her to say that she didn’t want to spoil the holidays but it may be their last Christmas together.
He says it seemed like the gay couples he knew had arrangements–Boyfriend A could sleep with other people as long a Boyfriend B didn’t hear about it–or as long as Boyfriend B did hear about it. But for David even one boyfriend was a lot of work.
He met Hugh when they were both single. They shared stories about previous boyfriends who were similar–said he was going out for a bite and then hook up with someone he’d met that afternoon.
Besides infidelity is tough if you’re not programmed for it. He tells us that his father once announced to him in the car apropos of nothing, “I’ve never once cheated on your mother.” Then he said nothing else.
A friend suggested it was a guilty conscience, but David thinks that he was having trouble at work and this little bit of truth made him feel better about himself.
How much do you do for the person you love before it’s too much?
As for David’s boil? After six nights of agony Hugh said “what do you say we lance that thing?”
Normally David would say no way to home surgery, but Hugh can do anything. Hugh once welded pipes in their place in Normandy and then went into the cellar to make his own cheese.
It was the smell of the boil that proved to be the worst thing–David thought it must be what actual evil smells like.
If you can stay together through that you now you’re set for life.
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