Jack Antonoff is readying a new Bleachers album, Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night, that’s set for release in July, so as part of the promotional cycle, the band stopped by The Tonight Show yesterday to perform “How Dare You Want More.” Elsewhere on the show, Antonoff sat down for an interview with Jimmy Fallon, where he talked about Taylor Swift, making music during the pandemic, and Bruce Springsteen.
He spoke about what it was like at the Grammys this year with Taylor Swift and the crew behind Folklore, saying, “It was the most I’ve fun I’ve had at something like that because it was so weird. […] It was also like, to know what you went through to make records that year. No one had an easy time with anything, but all I know in my corner is making records, and I know how tough it was and I know how much we had to go through to get those records done and to make them. So, it meant a lot.”
In reference to Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night, Antonoff went on to speak about how it felt making music during the pandemic and made an interesting comparison:
“I think about sourdough bakers, because there’s like a culture of people who make sourdough, right? And when the pandemic hit, how did they feel? Were they like, ‘Great, now everyone’s a f*cking sourdough baker.’ You’ll understand this as a comedian and writer, you guys [gestures off-camera] understand this as writers, anyone who writes out there: When the world is going on and people are going to restaurants and people are going to parties and people are doing things and you make the choice to take yourself out of it and work on your work, there’s a power to that. Something weird happened in the pandemic where I was like, ‘Well now we’re all forced inside, so I’m just’… it was just different and it made me do the opposite. It made me want to go out to the studio, which was tough, but it made me want to get the band in a room. We can’t play, so let’s play in the room like kids in a basement with that dream of playing real shows. It had a total… I don’t know if I’m articulating this well, but… because I’m usually sequestered in my life — like the sourdough baker — when everyone started making sourdough, I wanted to go back to the studio. […] It’s a solitary life, so it’s interesting.”
Watch Antonoff’s chat with Fallon above and find Bleachers’ performance of “How Dare You Want More” below.
Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night is out 7/30 via RCA. Pre-order it here.