Bleachers - BLEACHERS FOREVER tour poster

Bleachers Setlist

sideways
the van
Modern Girl
Jesus Is Dead
Wild Heart
Everybody Lost Somebody
Goodmorning
dirty wedding dress
we should talk
Chinatown
Don’t Go Dark
you and forever
I Wanna Get Better (solo acoustic)
Dream of Mickey Mantle (snippet)
Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call
How Dare You Want More (with Ricky Antonoff)
Rollercoaster
Tiny Moves
Don’t Take the Money
I Wanna Get Better (full band)
Stop Making This Hurt

Tour Dates

9/29 – Sterling Heights, MI @ Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre
9/30 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Andrew J. Brady Music Center
10/2 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s (ACL Nights)
10/3 – Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Festival
11/5 – Milan, Italy @ Alcatraz
11/7 – Munich, Germany @ Tonhalle
11/9-10 – Berlin, Germany @ Columbiahalle
11/12 – Oslo, Norway @ Sentrum Scene
11/13 – Stockholm, Sweden @ Annexet
11/15 – Hamburg, Germany @ Sporthalle
11/17-18 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso
11/20 – Brussels, Belgium @ Cirque Royal
11/21 – Paris, France @ Salle Pleyel
11/23 – Kingston upon Thames, UK @ Circuit
11/24 – Bristol, UK @ O2 Academy
11/25 – Glasgow, UK @ O2 Academy
11/26 – Leeds, UK @ O2 Academy
11/28 – Birmingham, UK @ O2 Academy
11/30 – Dublin, Ireland @ 3Olympia Theatre
12/2 – Manchester, UK @ O2 Apollo
12/3-4 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo

Explore More

■ Bleachers
Bleachers is a New Jersey rock band led by songwriter and producer Jack Antonoff. Their 2014 debut, Strange Desire, was followed by Gone Now (2017), Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night (2021), Bleachers (2024), and 2026’s everyone for ten minutes

Jack Antonoff has 13 Grammys. The first of those was as a member of Fun, for “We Are Young” (with Janelle Monae). The most recent were for songwriting and production on Kendrick Lamar’s “Luther” and “TV Off”. Arguably, nobody’s been more involved in crafting the shape of the pop charts over the past 10 years. He has a writing and production credit (with Taylor Swift) on the #5 song in the country right now (“I Knew It I Knew You”).

Compared to that, his rock band Bleachers has been relatively… anonymous? Working in the sonic palette of 80’s rock, their inclusion of saxophones, piano, and glockenspiel has unavoidably brought to mind Born to Run, even before Bruce Springsteen himself appeared on 2020’s “Chinatown”. Their first single (“I Wanna Get Better”) hit #1 on Billboard’s “Bubbling Under Hot 100” in 2014, but charting on the actual Hot 100 may not be part of the mission.

There certainly is a vision, though. Warm glass light fixtures surrounded an ornate stage at the Armory Saturday night that let the band scale three or four altitudes. I counted at least five keyboards, vintage or maybe just vintage-looking. A reel-to-reel tape machine drew attention at the back. Two full drum sets sat left and right. Certainly, yes, I’ve heard tubular bells on the records. But who tours with a full set of tubular bells?

Bleachers does. Antonoff’s status in the industry affords that kind of indulgence, but he relies on his band to really make the most of it. They sounded huge when they had to, hitting the highest peaks of 2026’s everyone for ten minutes, from opener “sideways” to “you and forever”. Then Antonoff went (mostly) solo acoustic for “I Wanna Get Better”.

Speaking of industry cachet: after “Better”, Antonoff told the story of Bleachers’s last visit to Minneapolis, where he’d asked, from the stage, where he might be able to quickly record an idea he had. “Paisley Park,” someone suggested from the crowd, and after a few phone calls, the band was being shown the shoes, the pants, the soundboard, and let into the studio. Those sessions would ultimately be used elsewhere, but the original idea became “Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call”, which came next in the setlist. A sad and wistful Christmas song: Prince would approve.

Like a lot of Bleachers work, “Christmas” has an emotional tension, and you’re missing out if you’re not bought in. Antonoff wants you feeling what he feels, whether that’s frustration, hope, isolation, or joy. The Armory crowd went along with him, crouching as he asked, so they could better jump when he jumped. Near the end, he noted that nobody was up on anybody else’s shoulders – and could we possibly accommodate his desire to see that? A dozen or so boyfriends and parents put their girlfriends and children up. By the time he remarked “everyone at a Bleachers show is supporting someone, and being supported”, I was going along with him, too.

Like Bleachers, opener This is Lorelei brought melodically rich songs full of real-life stories. A four-piece headed by Nate Amos (Water From Your Eyes), they had a jangly, twangy, drum-brush feel. Relatively speaking, they represented a hazy quiet: less drama, spectacle, and emotional resonance. (They were also pushed to the edge of the Armory’s large stage by all the stuff Bleachers brought, so.)