Brooklyn based Bleachers have quite a bit of trivia behind them as they prepare to deliver their first album. Of course when I say “first album”, it doesn’t really have the same stigma as say, a bunch of rough cuts just kicking out of high-school with their guitars in tow, going all-in on life with some dodgy record deal. No, it’s not that kind of important. You see, that “trivia” I was talking about, stems from their front-man and his vast experience with mainstream success and not so mainstream success. Currently pushing 30, Jack Antonoff had been the lead singer-songwriter for the lesser known Steel Train, before joining some pals to have a crack at fame with the band Fun. who of course were annoyingly massive in 2012 with hits like We Are Young and Some Nights. At this point, he’s releasing music because he just “feels like it”. Sometimes that’s the best atmosphere to write and record under and judging by the first track I Wanna Get Better, it could be spot on.
It seems that no matter how old you get, the topics of indie lyrics pretty much stay the same. We saw it in Blink 182 when they released albums as 30-somethings, or ex-Spoon patriots in Divine Fits talking about love and shit. I Wanna Get Better portrays the perfect image of the reality of young love juxtaposed against the what-the-fuck-was-I-thinking of adult retrospect and lust to find that beautiful right in a social scene generally full of wrongs. Musically, I’m not super taken with the original, but who better to swoop in to save the day than our dear learned colleague RAC.
The RAC version is a massive pump-up full of prickly guitars and positivity. It gives this straight-up pop tune some cool guy guts and stores all the emotion of the original for the choruses where it blasts your speakers with musical brilliance. Maybe they won’t always need RAC though. It’s a valiant attempt regardless, and the debut album Strange Desire is out 15th of July for all to see. I’d keep tabs.
For the curious, the original I Wanna Get Better is out now on iTunes via this link - http://smarturl.it/IWannaGetBetter