Jack Antonoff Settles In For Cozy, Solo Acoustic Bleachers Free At Noon Set

Jack Antonoff’s Bruce Springsteen-style storytelling was on full display Friday here at WXPN when the prolific producer gave a solo Bleachers performance to an uber-crowded room.

Antonoff played the whole gig with one guitar and did so with a laid-back vibe. The room itself was warm — like, sweat dripping down your back warm — but Antonoff’s warmth was the kind you get when seeing an old friend.

He regaled the crowd with various tales between songs, most notably about the first time he broke away from his “ancestral path” of becoming a working-class New Jerseyan like his father, who worked in a shoe factory. He recalled being both thrilled and guilt ridden for leaving home at 15 to go on tour with his first band Outline.

“I didn’t know how to write about it,” he said. Eventually, two songs sprang from the experience, one being the recently released “the van,” which is on Bleachers’ new album everyone for ten minutes, out May 22.

The song shouts Philly out in a few ways.

“I pulled into a Wawa in Philly in 2000 / Blue Magic coming from the speaker at the gas pump / All Jersey kids, we never learn to pump gas / So we sat there with the soundtrack,” Antonoff sang to the crowd.

He then went into “Isimo” from Bleachers’ 2024 self-titled album before talking about a new track from everyone called “i can’t believe you’re gone.” The song was inspired by the death of his grandmother, which made him reflect on how we remember those we lost, namely by the little trinkets that people collect throughout life that get left behind when they die.

After the new song, Antonoff chatted more with the crowd, talking about hope, joking that asking people if they feel hopeful in 2026 is a bit of a ridiculous question. But he said he feels hope. “You can call me crazy,” he said. “The people upstairs want us to express ourselves through rage, but we all want out. We have a shared sense of rejection.”

He then went into “I Miss Those Days” from 2017’s Gone Now, leading the crowd in a bit of singalong with the “la las” in the song’s chorus then performed “45” off 2021’s Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night.

“The vibes in Philadelphia are wonderful,” he said to the crowd.

He then waxed poetic about Philly foods and how the last time Bleachers came through, he and the band ate cheesesteaks from four of the “big” places a few hours ahead of their show at The Met. “Everything was a blur” after eating them, he quipped. “Traveling around and eating, it’s impossible to keep up with, I’m not doing that anymore!”

He shouted out the audience, saying they were “sick” as the kids say, and that he cannot wait to play TD Pavilion at The Mann on June 13 with the band.

He closed the set out with one of Bleachers’ biggest hits, “I Wanna Get Better.” This take was slower and softer than the pop banger album cut that touts more than 187 million streams on Spotify. Antonoff busted out some deft finger picking on his guitar during the song and led the crowd to shout along during the final pre-chorus of “That’s why I’m standing on the overpass / Screaming at myself, “Hey, I wanna get better.”

By that point, his fingerpicking transitioned into full strumming with the crowd singing along with the final lyrics “I wanna get better, better, better, better / I wanna get better.”