BLEACHERS-everyone-for-ten-minutes-Artwork-2026
I listened to “Everyone for ten minutes” three times. I don't know if I like it yet.
It's not indecision: it's that the Bleachers album works exactly like that, it keeps you suspended and this is probably its most coherent project.
Jack Antonoff has built a catalog in twelve years that thrives on that fine line between exultation and melancholy, and the fifth album doesn't move the needle. He already knows where he wants to be.
The problem, if it is a problem, is that he knows it too well.
Sideways and The goes they open with the confidence of those who have nothing to prove: synths, saxophones, soft harmonies that are layered with that sonic generosity that is the Bleachers trademark. It sounds like the new American pop must sound in 2026 and here my doubts begin, which don't concern the album but me. Do I like new American pop?
We should talk it's the moment when the disk stops being compact and becomes necessary. Antonoff defined it as the heart of his creative work, and you can feel it: it is the track that traces his origins in music, New Jersey, the van, the promises made at twenty. Jangly guitars, banjo, a bass that moves its feet while the lyrics do the opposite. It's the best piece on the album and also the only one where form and content seem to really go together.
Dirty wedding dress it has that suburban musicality that Antonoff has always pursued, with sax solos and a musical and vocal approach that quotes Springsteen. I can't believe you're gone it is the darkest track, violin and mourning, and has the courage not to resolve itself into consolation. The rest dancing, she's from beforethe more choral and almost pastoral pieces flow between devotion and marriage, death and hope, electric guitars and glockenspiels, with that insistence on optimism that after a while weighs as much as the pessimism of others.
Everyone for ten minutesthe closing song, is solemn and liberating at the same time. A closure that works because it doesn't pretend to explain anything.
The album is coherent, constructed, played very well. He is also, at times, all too comfortable with himself. Antonoff knows how to write songs that sound bigger than they are, and here that skill is used with absolute craftsmanship.
If this is enough, it depends on what you are looking for. I'm still waiting to understand what I'm looking for and perhaps this is the most interesting result that “Everyone for ten minutes” has produced on me.
SCORE: Score 7.00
TO LISTEN NOW
the van – we should talk – upstairs at ELS
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
Nothing, nothing, but on the third listen I'm still not convinced.
