Jack Antonoff and co. brings personal Bleachers set to Madison

Bleachers’ frontman (and fun. contributor) Jack Antonoff made it well known how important this tour was to avid listeners at The Sylvee (Madison, WI) this past Wednesday. In speaking candidly between sets, Jack mentioned how paradigm-shifting it was that the idea of doing shows could ever go away – that the magic of a live experience, so important to all of us passionate about experiencing live music – was just as vitally important to a performer like himself and how he was unable to process (initially) the idea that something so central to his core of being could simply vanish. That something so integral and second-nature could be stripped away and leave him scrambling to understand his own existence without the mechanisms by which he had been able to understand it.

Jack finished this speech by thanking the audience, but importantly, going even further – that because of this special context, this reemergence of musicians’ ability to express themselves in the most baring, honest way possible – that his thanks were meant to be more heartfelt and emphatic than the typical “thanks for coming to the show”-type speech. It was a deeply moving experience and speech and conveyed just how personal and special live music can be, but more than that, just how special music that really speaks to the individual experience like Bleachers’ does can be.

Where else are you going to hear an artist thanking their most passionate fans (who at the time of that show had been to 20 sets in a row) for giving them the middle finger throughout the entire set, a long running joke that Jack personally admitted to starting (with perhaps a hint of regret?). That combination of bared person and intimacy, combined with material, are what makes attending a Bleachers show an unforgettable experience and one any music fan, regardless of genre, should consider a worthy investment of their time.

Bleachers played a large amount of hits (I Wanna Get Better, Rollercoaster) but also played a significant amount of material off their 2020 release Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, so new and old fans alike had something to be pleased by.

Below are photos from that set, featuring additional support from Claude: