Bleachers
Everyone for Ten Minutes
DIRTY HIT
If A Stranger Desired—Bleachers’ 2024 reimagined of their debut album—was Jack Antonoff’s tribute to the Wall of Sound aesthetic made rough, vital, and insularly boyish through homage to Springsteen’s Born to Run, his band’s studio follow-up is just as mountainous, only in a totally different direction. The bigness that Everyone for Ten Minutes holds is dedicated to the human spirit and the hope of something better—and rockier—while pushing its adoration into something broad and outside the self. And who couldn’t use something hard-edged, anthemic, doe-eyed, and universally optimistic at a time such as this?
In what sounds like the record you may have hoped Foo Fighters would make upon their return in 2026, the screamo romanticist within Antonoff is deeply lovestruck—in love with love itself, in the Greek ideal—when it comes to approaching one woman and their alone moments, as heard on lead single “You and Forever” and its Olympian passions, or its humbler sister-song, “Take You Out Tonight.” These tracks speak loudly, but pine softly—sometimes very softly—and spiritually for the object of their desire. In his best Lou Reed melodic monotone, Antonoff “thank[s] God [he] found [her]” on “I’m Not Joking” in a manner that’s both earnest and blasé, in time with the song’s gently skittish rhythm. But when the rugs get pulled from under the drone-moaning protagonist, as on “I Can’t Believe You’re Gone,” it’s as if the gods have left him high and dry without room for sarcasm.
Sometimes Antonoff’s sentiments are way over-the-top and florid (see “Dirty Wedding Dress”), and his ensemble’s arrangements—even at their folksiest—sound as if they’re going to topple their writer’s portentous, heartfelt emotions. But if Bleachers were looking to best their Bruce-inspired last outing, there was nowhere to go but up and over, busier and buzzier. It’s like Christopher Nolan said about filming The Odyssey after Oppenheimer: go Homer-ically big or get blown up by a nuclear bomb.
