Bleachers at Roadrunner, 3/24

In the year 2022, Bleachers somehow remains an incredibly underrated band. It’s not that they’re completely unknown – if they were, they wouldn’t have sold out Roadrunner, Boston’s newest venue with 3500 person capacity two nights in a row – but if you asked even your most pop-oriented friend, there’s a surprisingly decent chance that they haven’t heard of Bleachers. 

It’s truly such a shame, since Bleachers is a damn near universally appealing band. I don’t mean that they’re unexperimentative, dumb, or bland – anything but, in fact. Bleachers just excel at making massive, soaring, unabashedly exuberant pop music. After all, frontman Jack Antonoff has set the gold standard for contemporary pop music – through his production and songwriting work for titans such as Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, and Lorde, Antonoff has pushed emotionally vulnerable songwriting and the “indie” ethos to the forefront of pop over the course of the past decade. There’s a reason that the albums he’s worked on avoid sounding formulaic, overly glossy, and cold. Instead, they feel intimate, well-considered, and for lack of a polite term, just far, far better than many of his contemporaries.

As Bleachers, Antonoff turns his production and songwriting chops inwards and applies them to himself. The result? Triumphant, maximalist, emotionally nuanced, and painfully fun pop perfection; the kind of music that would soundtrack a much-loved coming of age film. But enough with the context – Bleachers kicked off their latest tour with this show, the first of a two-night residency in Boston. Even more exciting was that the band had a special one-night-only setlist prepared, playing the entirety of their debut album – 2014’s Strange Desire – as well as select cuts and b-sides from their latest record Take The Sadness Out of Saturday Night.

After a stellar opening set from Charly Bliss – a band that has long been generating serious buzz on their own (“I was honestly more jealous that you got to see them,” a friend quipped after a chance encounter on a bus ride home the next day) – Antonoff and band took to the stage in darkness. A singular spotlight beamed down on Antonoff as he sat down at his piano and began playing the opening notes to “Wild Heart.”

“Rollercoaster” followed. To revisit my coming-of-age-film analogy from earlier, “Rollercoaster” is the song that plays when the main character pops their head out the top of the car as they barrel through a tunnel with their friends at 1 AM. If my last.fm stats are to be believed, I hadn’t listened to the song since 2014, but hearing it live reminded me of how much I loved it as a young teen. I believe that the song’s “ro-o-llercoaster, I don’t say no!” chorus was tailor made to be chanted by a crowd of thousands, so hearing the crowd sing along to it was a heartwarming reminder of pop music’s communal power.

Bleachers played through the rest of Strange Desire in order. Highlights included “I Wanna Get Better” – not only one of the first songs that I was properly obsessed with, but also the song that soundtracked my first serious crush – “Reckless Love,” “You’re Still A Mystery” – which they extended well past the regular 4.5 minute runtime thanks to the help of a particularly ludicrous saxophone solo – and album closer “Who I Want You To Love,” which they hadn’t played live since 2015. 

After finishing the Strange Desire part of the setlist, Antonoff took a quick moment to talk about the record, remarking that “I love this record like the day I made it –  that record started our lives, and we can’t thank you enough.” To round off the night, Antonoff and crew played a few songs from TTSOSN –  “How Dare You Want More,” which featured another ridiculous sax solo, and “Chinatown” – as well as a few deep cuts – “Alfie’s Song,” written for and released on the soundtrack for the film Love, Simon, and unreleased track “Margo.” Bleachers brought the show to a close with “Stop Making This Hurt,” a shamelessly catchy and euphoric piece of pop rock that left the crowd grooving, joyful, and contented.

Here at Melisma, we tend to be pretty annoying about music. It’s not that we’re particularly snobby about our music tastes, but more often than not, we find ourselves discussing cutting-edge sounds that exist in comparatively inaccessible genres. To top things off, we rarely get the opportunity to cover outright pop shows. To me, however, this Bleachers show was a testament to the healing power of pop music. It was proof that few things beat an excellently written and produced pop song, as well as that anybody who says they detest pop music is a.) misinformed and b.) surely lying. As the crowd screamed along with his every word, I couldn’t help but think to myself: at the end of the day, Jack Antonoff is just a man who really loves music.