Jack Antonoff has achieved a rare type of success in pop music by ignoring everything going on around him. As the sound of radio has grown sleeker and sexier, Antonoff’s music remains bold and bombastic. He’s worked as a producer and songwriter on music beloved on a wide scale (Sara Bareilles’ “Brave,” Zayn and Taylor’s “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”) and more cultishly appreciated (Tegan and Sara’s “How Come You Don’t Want Me,” Grimes’ “Entropy”)—but you know his work when you hear it. Antonoff’s first solo album as Bleachers, 2014’s Strange Desire, was a lovable exploration of the ideas at the core of his sound: all the piano breaks and gated-reverb drums, the gang vocals and the ceaseless, head-spinning barrage of hooks. But to the world at large, it was less of a breakthrough than a sturdy business card. By the end of that year, he’d be better known for accompanying one of the world’s biggest pop stars on her biggest album yet.
In an interview with Pitchfork, Antonoff discussed his guiding principle as a collaborator: “If I ever work with someone else, all that I think about is: Do you want to make the best album you’ve ever made in your life, or not?” It’s a lofty standard, but one he also sets for himself as a solo artist. The best song on Strange Desire was called “I Wanna Get Better”: While its title was a response to hitting rock bottom, it’s a sentiment that also applies to the heights of his success. In fact, if there’s any major similarity between Antonoff and Bruce Springsteen—an artist he frequently cites as an inspiration—it’s his unabashed ambition: a conviction so earnest and ingrained that it could be mistaken for humility.
Regardless of what people think of Gone Now, Antonoff's stately and uneven sophomore album, he’s already mythologizing it and shaping a world around its songs. Antonoff clearly believes that Gone Now is his masterpiece, and everything around the record suggests as much. He’s somehow touring the bedroom where it was conceived as a “moving, living art installation”: an act of hubris so indulgent even Jay Z waited 20 years before attempting it. From beginning to end, Gone Now has all the affectations of an over-the-top pop masterpiece. There are spoken-word samples, saxophone solos, and sound effects; guest appearances, multipart reprises, and allusions. In the opening lines of the self-reflexive first track “Dream of Mickey Mantle,” Antonoff is romanticizing the album’s creation: “All the hope I had when I was young/I hope I wasn’t wrong/I miss those days so I sing a ‘Don’t Take the Money’ song.” Here, he poses the driving question of Gone Now: Is Antonoff really as great as he thinks he is?
Occasionally, you’re inclined to believe him. Early singles “Don’t Take the Money” and “Everybody Lost Somebody” are worthy additions to his catalog, soaring anthems made all the better for their insistence on indulging every pleasure center at once. Other songs take a refreshingly nuanced musical approach, like the gentle pulse of “All My Heroes” or the stark synths in “Nothing Is U.” Too many songs, however, get lost in a middle ground, like “Hate That You Know Me,” a Carly Rae Jepsen collaboration that bursts and fizzles like cheap fireworks until reaching its triumphant but all-too-brief conclusion. The otherwise pleasant “Goodmorning” loses its appeal by spawning a series of recurring reprises throughout the album: its reappearances quickly become grating and only increase the massive debt Antonoff already owes to the chorus of “All the Young Dudes.”
With all its repeating themes, it’s easy to search for some kind of narrative within Gone Now. Antonoff’s lyrics, however, often feel hollow. “Let’s Get Married” is built around an honest instinct, responding to feelings of hopelessness by bringing your loved ones closer. But Antonoff’s oversimplification of the subject matter clashes with the momentous music, creating an effect like watching someone proposing on the Jumbotron at a half-empty stadium. The conversational lyrics in closing number “Foreign Girls” are almost charming in their banality (“I walk to the pawn shop/Now I’m at the pawn shop”). At the end of the record, Antonoff’s aimlessness sounds like an admission of defeat, like even he is unsure what all the preceding fanfare was for.
By aiming for the textbook definition of a big-picture pop album, Antonoff has ended up with the epitome of a vanity project: an album that revolves entirely around one person, made more enjoyable the less you expect from it. This is likely not the most memorable work Antonoff has to offer this year (or even this month for that matter, with Lorde’s highly anticipated Melodrama, which Antonoff co-wrote and co-produced, due in two weeks). In a recent New York Times profile, Antonoff discussed his post-fun. rebranding, from primary member of a massively successful pop group to lone wolf auteur: “I remember immediately—immediately—feeling like, ‘I don’t want to play ‘We Are Young’ when I’m 35,’” he said, “‘I don’t want to be defined by this.’” By now, he’s accrued a strong enough songbook to successfully render that single a mere footnote to an enviable and flourishing career. Somewhere even further down his resume, there’s a place for Gone Now.
