At the start of this review, it’s only fair that I make a disclosure: Chinatown by Bleachers, featuring none other than Bruce Springsteen, was one of my very favourite tracks of the last year. A real lockdown record, with its haunting vocals and infused with a sense of yearning, it captured the essence of a difficult period. When lead singer and frontman Jack Antonoff and Springsteen crooned “I wanna find tomorrow”, it felt like they were talking to us all and our hope of better times to come.

As such, I go into Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night – the New York City band’s third album – expecting to be amazed. Over their past two albums, 2014’s Strange Desire and Gone Now in 2017, they’ve cultivated a reputation for crafting dark, brooding tracks with deceptively upbeat melodies and pop sensibilities. Antonoff himself has also won praise for his writing and production work for artists including Taylor Swift, Lorde, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Lana Del Rey, who makes an appearance here on the delicate Secret Life.

Opening number 91 is co-written with another guest star, the author Zadie Smith, which blends rousing strings with unsurprisingly beautiful lyrics, and leads wonderfully into Chinatown. Stop Making This Hurt is a joyous-sounding affair with its jangly keyboards, big bass line and rousing riff, but in typical Bleachers fashion it masks a darker lyrical undertone – Antonoff pleading “just say goodbye like you mean it” hits particularly hard.

The Springsteen feel extends into Big Life and Don’t Go Dark, while 45 is another highlight, a powerful acoustic lament pockmarked with sadness (“‘Cause all the blessings are somebody else's / They're flowers in my neighbor's pot / I'm torn exactly into two pieces / One who wants you and one who's gone dark”).

Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night doesn’t disappoint. The synths and pop flourishes of their previous work have been dialled back, but this is a tighter, more focused and more powerful record, with a big, beating heart. 

Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night tracklist:

1. 91
2. Chinatown (featuring Bruce Springsteen)
3. How Dare You Want More
4. Big Life
5. Secret Life (featuring Lana Del Rey)
6. Stop Making This Hurt
7. Don’t Go Dark
8. 45
9. Strange Behaviour
10. What’d I Do With All This Faith?

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.