Lost Weekend, by Phoebe Bridgers
Six years ago, the second Phoebe Bridgers album, Punisher, churned up more acclaim, opportunity, and exposure than any indie-minded singer-songwriter might have been prepared to handle. Bridgers earned gigs opening for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and gained wider attention for the 2023 release of The Record, a full debut LP from her Boygenius supergroup.
Her third album, Lost Weekend, often sounds as though she is forming a bubble around herself and her music. That bubble allows her to observe and communicate; it also allows her to occlude some thoughts with smokescreens and alter, or confound, interpretations with colors and tones. It can seem as thick as armored glass or as fragile as a globular film of soap and water.
It expands and contracts by her will. With three co-producers—Jack Antonoff, Tony Berg, and Ethan Gruska, each with previous Bridgers experience—plus additional production from Alex G, the support act on her upcoming tour, she spreads her arms wide for sonic concepts as big as the melodramatically festive chorus of “Lost Boys” and cozies up to something as small as the strummed banjo closing out the short “Never Going Back!”
Songs shrink and enlarge as if learning how best to express so many emotions: “The Governor’s Waltz” incorporates simple acoustic-folk guitar patterns, an angelic choir that seems borrowed from a Frank Capra movie, and a vocal of soft strength in the face of crushing heartbreak and self-realization.
“Liberty Tree,” touching upon the apprehension of success and the effervescence of romance, moves from indie-folk prettiness to an excitable indie-pop gallop and then calms into faint ambient beats and another distant angel trilling.
“I Can’t Wait,” sweetly doubtful about healing from hurt, drifts from California dreaming into a back-porch duet—reportedly with Geese frontman Cameron Winter, credited as “Son John-Johnson”—and then up to a modern-pop coda, suddenly silenced.
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Lost Weekend is something like Bon Iver’s 2011 self-titled sophomore album: an exceptionally far-reaching artistic reconfiguration in the face of fame. “You don’t have to believe in magic/Leave it to me, and I’ll make it happen,” Phoebe Bridgers scream-sings in the penultimate track, “As Above.” And she does make it happen.
Get Lost Weekend on Amazon here.
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