The last time Phoebe Bridgers released a solo album was June 2020, as the world was deep in the midst of the isolation-inducing Covid-19 lockdown. That album, Punisher, was a universally acclaimed success, one that would see the Pasadena, California-born singer-songwriter become a global star, a star that would shine even brighter as one third of boygenius alongside Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker and their similarly acclaimed 2023 debut, The Record. One can't help but think that Punisher was aided somewhat by a world thrown into an isolationist, and in some instances solitary, existence, its intimate emotional core hitting even harder when rewarded by domestic environments attuned to its delicate, fragile, but also ambitious nature.
Punisher found Bridgers making what was, until that point, her most expansive music to date, in which arrangements were grander, instrumentation richer, and several songs possessed their own take on anthemic, arena-rock-ready grandeur. Since both Punisher and boygenius rose to superstardom, Bridgers, who was once in a high-profile relationship with actor Paul Mescal, has receded from public view to some degree, and has only now, six years later, provided the follow-up to her breakthrough solo record.
From the opening moments of "The Outside", it’s clear the gap has been a positive one. As Bridgers' lone, vocoder-treated vocals enter, it's immediately apparent that Lost Weekend will be a great deal different from its predecessor. Rich, orchestral swells envelop Bridgers as the track progresses, a sort of introductory overture, symphonic in its aural scope and cinematic in its portal-like pull. Lead single "Lost Boys", and, as of 12AM today, the only track the public has been privy to, follows, and like Punisher's greatest moments, it is immediately catchy, lyrically clever and irreverent, managing to be simultaneously intimate and filmically huge. It is a recurring, intuitively emotive skill that Bridgers utilises better than most of her contemporaries.
Things take a darker, more introspective turn on "Kill Me", which plunges Bridgers' familiar folk-rock songwriting deep into electronic space, buoyant, seemingly floating, orbiting, watching proceedings unfold from a distance, disconnected. As has long been common for Bridgers, a forever influence is the formative indie-folk of Elliott Smith, and the immaculate "Governor's Waltz" recalls the deceased icon's more intimate, later-period work. Perhaps the title is also a nod towards Smith's own "Waltz #2". "Bobby" is a well-placed uptempo rocker, full of tension and release, that again finds Bridgers scaling anthemic heights both melodically and lyrically, with memorable tongue-in-cheek couplets including "And if you didn't like either one of my friends / I'd kill them, I'd kill them", on a celebratory song of new love found with her beau Bo Burnham. It's Bridgers at her irreverent best.
As Lost Weekend progresses, it reveals itself as existing somewhere at a meeting point between her stunning debut Stranger in the Alps and Punisher, which often unfairly eclipses its predecessor. Folkier, rootsier elements are more pronounced here, rising to the fore on "Haunted", "Liberty Tree" and "Never Going Back!", all highly enjoyable tracks, but Lost Weekend's greatest moments perhaps lie in the spare, lonely, barely-there nature of tracks including the aforementioned "Kill Me", and even more so in the spectral melancholia of "Other Plans" and the graceful, drowning swells of "As Above".
If there's one track that will no doubt have indie-rock fans drooling, it's "I Can't Wait", which sees Bridgers' feather-light murmurs paired with the ragged fragility of Cameron Winter's falsetto. It is a perfect distillation of what makes Lost Weekend so compelling. The album pleads for the listener to be submerged, enveloped in claustrophobic, deeply personal, unfiltered sonic waters, which could sound like hell if it wasn't so damn beautiful.
Lost Weekend is another triumph from perhaps the most relevant voice of her generation: an album that finds Phoebe Bridgers returning after six years away not by repeating what came before, but by pushing further into the space between intimacy and enormity, fragility and grandeur, the personal and the cinematic.
Phoebe Bridgers – Lost Weekend is out now on vinyl & CD
