Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff continues to find inspiration in his past
Jack Antonoff of Bleachers, courtesy.
Jack Antonoff has written songs that have dealt with the death of his sister, and how her death impacted his life, for most of his musical career. The 30-year-old fun. guitarist was 18 when his sister Sarah died of cancer.
“I wrote about it then. I wrote about it after that. I’m 30, and I write about it from the lens of now,” said Antonoff, whose new band Bleachers performs at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival on Aug. 8.
Bleachers, a band that for Antonoff is every bit as important as his Grammy-winning counterpart, is an outlet for the bandleader to express the sadness and confusion he felt at the time. The debut album, Strange Desire, was released last month.
“(I wanted) to tell my story of what I’ve been through, (how) I’ve tried to move on without carrying all the pieces with me, and how I tried to live in a world where I could be kind to myself,” he said. “Basically, (to) tell the darkest, realest stories, but find a way to have a hopeful twist on them. That’s what ‘I Wanna Get Better’ is about; that’s what the whole album is about.”
The catchy lead single was released seemingly out of nowhere in February — according to Antonoff’s plan — and has been streamed nearly two million times. The song launched on the same day as the Bleachers website. Prior to that, the only indication that Antonoff had new music on the way was a vague Craigslist post advertising a musician in need of “strange desire.”
Q&A: Jack Antonoff on the proliferation of producers
“I Wanna Get Better” deals with a lot of serious personal issues. How difficult was it to use that as the joke in the video?
I loved that. I always want to have a mixture of something you could laugh at or cry at.
Does that song hold the whole album together?
I wouldn’t say that, but it’s the first song I want to play for people. I think it’s the perfect door to open to get them inside the world where the album is.
You’re both musician and producer. What do you think of the rise of the producer-hitmaker, like Pharell or Charli XCX
It’s great. It’s like anything. There’s a lot of crap, and a lot of great stuff. With the way technology works, all of a sudden, everyone’s a producer. And so the world is flooded, no different than 10 years ago when everyone was in a band, and there was too many bands. But to me, it almost makes it easier to cut through the fat. Everyone is doing it because it’s so easy and so accessible. That’s why it’s bad, and the music that’s good is because it’s so easy and so accessible. If you know what you’re doing, you can do it in bed. You can make a Bleachers album in your hotel room. I like the idea of having an impact on culture as a whole, not just one band. It I could take my sound and bring it to other artists, and have it be on the radio, and have it permeate more than just one thing.
Who else would you like to produce?
I’m most excited to find that thing I don’t know about. Anytime I try to work on somebody I’m already a fan of, sometimes I’m too dug in to the culture of it. Look at an artist like Robyn. I love Robyn, but you already know too much about Robyn.
How do you deal with the tabloid exposure from having a famous girlfriend (Lena Dunham of “Girls”)? Are you used to having the exposure?
I don’t (deal with it). I really just don’t think about it. You can get struck by lightning right now, and you’re not going to think about it. I don’t think about silly things, and tabloids are silly. The thing about tabloids is they don’t really have to fact-check anything.
“The last thing the world needs is another goddamn hashtag campaign,” he said. “(I wanted) to cut through the noise….It’s nice to have some mystery left in this world.”
A video, directed by girlfriend Lena Dunham, of Girls fame, played the seriousness of the lyrics for a joke by having Antonoff play a therapist who gives bad advice to a cadre of people.
The majority of Strange Desire — co-produced by John Hill (MIA, Jay Z) and Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yaz, Erasure) — was written and recorded while Antonoff was still on the road with fun. While he had never, up until that point, been able to write music while on the road, something clicked that allowed him to multitask. He would record on his laptop in hotel rooms, and sometimes seek out studios as the band hopscotched across the globe. The lead single is a good example.
“I did the vocals to that song in Malaysia,” he said. “I recorded the drums in New Zealand. I worked on production in Japan. I just felt like I’d wake up in the morning and want to write.”
And it was easy for Jack Antonoff to insulate himself from his varied surroundings. He viewed his hotel room as a bubble. His fun. bandmates, Nate Ruess and Andrew Dost, who besides his family were the only ones who knew about his extracurricular work, encouraged him. Because each of them came from a culture of being the “dominant force” in their own projects — in fact, Antonoff continued to lead New Jersey band Steel Train for two years after fun. got together — having a second project came as a second nature.
“You find time when there’s something to be really passionate about,” said Antonoff, before revealing that he doesn’t even remember where he was able to get the time during the heavy promotional schedule for fun. “Whether it’s between soundcheck and the show, or on the one day off, you make things work.”
It was never his plan to keep the music a secret. His only intention was to not let the success of his other band make people think he was cashing in. Antonoff said he wanted the music to get the attention, not the musician.
“Doing a band is the most unbelievable amount of work, and there’s an unbelievable amount of gratification. I wouldn’t do that with one foot in,” he said. “To go out and tour and spend two years making the album – it’s like having two children – fun. and Bleachers.
Follow Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.