Jack Antonoff has spent years balancing two identities: the behind-the-scenes architect behind some of modern pop’s biggest records and the frontman of Bleachers, a project built around nostalgia, emotional honesty, and oversized arrangements. On everyone for ten minutes, Bleachers’ fifth studio album, Antonoff turns inward, exploring what remains beneath the noise of fame, criticism, technology, and the constant pressure to be seen. It is a record about intimacy in an era where everything feels public, and about finding the people who still make the world feel manageable.
Musically, everyone for ten minutes delivers many of the elements that have defined Bleachers from the beginning: sweeping synths, cinematic saxophone, layered harmonies, and choruses designed to feel larger than the room they are played in. The album opens with “sideways,” a dreamlike introduction that builds toward a dramatic collision of drums, horns, and synths, while “the van” channels the reflective warmth of earlier Bleachers records without simply revisiting the past. These songs reveal an artist still fascinated by the emotional power of big moments, but increasingly interested in the quieter feelings underneath them.
The album’s strongest moments arrive when Antonoff allows the songwriting to stand at the center. “we should talk” transforms an uncomfortable conversation into one of the record’s most affecting songs, pairing an infectious melody with reflections on growing older, losing connections, and watching the world become increasingly divided. “you and forever” carries a similar tension, wrapping themes of devotion, exhaustion, and modern cynicism inside one of Bleachers’ biggest-sounding arrangements. Meanwhile, “i can’t believe you’re gone” strips away some of the spectacle to confront grief and memory with a vulnerability that feels deeply personal.
That vulnerability is also where the album occasionally struggles. For a record built around emotional openness, everyone for ten minutes sometimes creates distance between Antonoff and the listener. The dense production choices that make Bleachers so recognizable can also soften the impact of the album’s most powerful ideas. Songs like “dancing” and “she’s from before” explore heavy themes of loss, identity, and reflection, but their emotional weight occasionally feels buried beneath layers of sound.
Still, everyone for ten minutes remains a compelling portrait of an artist wrestling with the complicated reality of connection. Antonoff is not abandoning the grand gestures that made Bleachers special; he is questioning what those gestures mean when the world around them feels increasingly disconnected. Closing track “upstairs at els” provides the album’s emotional release, turning toward friendship, community, and the people who remain when everything else falls away. It is a record that does not always reveal itself easily, but its best moments remind us why Bleachers have endured: because beneath all the noise, there has always been something deeply human at the center. – Jason Felton