Bleachers: Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night [RCA]

Why you'll love it

This pressing comes in a foil-stamped gatefold jacket with a 24-page booklet. The album reached No. 27 on the Billboard 200, and Rolling Stone called it the band's most cohesive album yet.

This edition

• Foil-stamped gatefold jacket
• 24-page booklet included

About the album

Before anyone heard a note of it, fans could ring a phone tree and listen to snippets down the line, which tells you a lot about Jack Antonoff's love of an old-fashioned bit of showmanship. He started the album in late 2019, during a three-day mini-tour with a very long name, and finished it during the pandemic, stretching Bleachers well beyond its 1980s comfort zone.

"Chinatown" is a hushed, late-night drive with Bruce Springsteen riding shotgun, "45" is a gentle, folky heart-on-sleeve singalong, and "Stop Making This Hurt" and "How Dare You Want More" are the big, saxophone-blasting E Street-style rockers, the latter debuted on The Tonight Show. "Secret Life" brings Lana Del Rey in for a soft duet, and "91" opens the record with real intimacy. Antonoff plays almost everything himself, with Patrik Berger co-producing, and the rockabilly echo on the vocals gives the whole thing a warm, dusty glow.

Critics heard Springsteen, Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens in the mix, and Antonoff took the album across North America on a 33-city tour. Saturday nights at the shop are fairly sedate, so we've started playing it at closing time just in case.

Also at Kops: more Bleachers on vinyl · browse Pop

Tracklist

Listen

On RCA, the 2021 album.