Bleachers play NPR’s ‘Tiny Desk Concert’ with 3 gorgeous stripped-down ‘Gone Now’ songs

Bleachers play NPR’s ‘Tiny Desk Concert’ with stripped-down versions of 3 gorgeous songs

American indie pop band Bleachers, aka Jack Antonoff with whichever artists he’s working with at the moment, is the latest musical act to appear on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series. This time it was Antonoff with pianist Mikey Hart and multi-instrumentalist Evan Smith.

The trio’s performance was slightly different than many artists that show up at NPR, however.

That’s because Bleachers only performed three songs — “Everybody Lost Somebody” “Don’t Take the Money” and “Foreign Girls” — and incredibly stripped-down versions of each as well.

The rest of their 15 minutes at the Tiny Desk was spent on Jack Antonoff’s monologues about the stagecraft behind Bleachers, and about the connection between crying and dancing.

And yes Bleachers’ Tiny Desk Concert performance was definitely rough, with a couple of mistakes, a boombox that wouldn’t turn off, and sometimes off-kilter harmonies. But also actually quite beautiful and raw.

Especially “Don’t Take the Money“, which is such a lovely little honest song with Antonoff’s plain but sweet vocals, and with those gorgeous lyrics. And, I think, much more stunning without all the bells and whistles the recorded version comes with.

Watch Bleacher’s Tiny Desk Concert performance in the NPR video below. You can buy Bleachers’ second album Gone Now, where you will find all three of these, I think, wonderful songs.

About Michelle Topham

I'm a Brit-American journalist, former radio DJ at 97X WOXY, and Founder/CEO of Leo Sigh. I'm also obsessed with music, anime, manga, and K-dramas. Help!

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