Music Review: Bleachers edge past The Boss as Jack Antonoff finds a new sort of peace

Self-titled albums are the traditional way for a musical act to introduce themselves. Singer-songwriter Jack Antonoff — the accomplished multi-instrumentalist, Grammy-winning super-producer and New Jersey cool kid — offers a mature, kaleidoscopic 14 tracks, with turns into softer directions and styles. “I’ll make your bed/I’ll make your home,” Antonoff sings in the Beatles-esque “Woke Up Today.” Bruce Springsteen — who had a guest appearance on the last Bleachers’ album, “Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night” — stays away this time, but as always looms over the new set, particularly when E Street-style horns erupt and threaten to swallow songs. Antonoff mimics The 1975 in the superb “Call Me After Midnight.” The album highlight has to be the ambitious “Hey Joe,” a sort of 2024 response to Simon & Garfunkel’s ”Mrs. The barn-burning “Modern Girl” has Antonoff mocking himself with one of his best lines: “I guess I’m/New Jersey’s finest New Yorker/unreliable reporter/pop music hoarder/some guy playing quarters.” Antonoff’s recent marriage to Margaret Qualley may have re-centered him — “Me Before You” is a “Streets of Philadelphia”-style look back at a man who has new perspective.