Phoebe Bridgers is a lyricist of a certain waiting room — the internal lobby in your mind that is flooded with grief and ill-fated avenues. Her most beloved tracks feature fragments of its framework, from the funeral of a close friend who overdosed to loving someone who engages with self-hatred.
On the album opener of her latest release, “Lost Weekend,” Bridgers stays the course: “I am on the outside watching,” she repeats, entrapped in holding cells of momentous occasions, though feeling absent from the physical moment.
“The Outside” marks the most sonically experimental we have heard Bridgers, whose vocals enter saturated in a vocoder effect, before being stripped for the chorus. It creates a distant, otherworldly and isolated feeling — a new addition to a sonic atmosphere she’s mastered over the course of “Stranger in the Alps” and “Punisher.” The evolution of sound anchors the central themes of “Lost Weekend” — family trauma, heartbreak, emotional insensitivity (though she still finds avenues for her signature sound to have a place on the album).
Following the jangly, upbeat standalone single, “Lost Boys,” Bridgers is hyper self-aware on “Kill Me,” a track that feels like an isolated night walk down city streets with flickering lights. As she passively monitors others reaching their adult milestones, hers appear to turn to dust, leaving her with a shattered illusion and unwavering anticipation of the end. By the end, she’s kissed her current partner, Bo Burnham, at a costume party, anxious to escape reality with him: “Let’s go missing,” she repeats.
She drifts back to her post-pandemic appearance at the New York Governors Ball with ex-fiance Paul Mescal in “The Governor’s Waltz,” painting their unraveling romance against a haunted, fluttering guitar. The track ends with a sharp public swipe, addressing her tension with Mescal’s now romantic partner, Gracie Abrams. “And she can pretend to be me, since she took my place in my bed, on that stage. I have not lost any sleep.”
Burnham re-enters the frame in “Bobby,” a depiction of the early intimacy between the two: she sleeps in his T-shirts, he lives in her house, he sings in the shower, she talks to herself. “This could be the end of wanting,” she repeats, over and over, before shedding the nagging angst: “What are you doing the rest of my life, Bobby?”
On the title track, “Lost Weekend,” those overflowing anxieties bleed back into a stark confession: “I’m supposed to be married, but I called it off. I’ve been known to throw a tantrum when things are not the way I imagine them.” The space ultimately allows for regret and resilience to blur, leaving Bridgers to weigh the unforgivable past against the unfolding reality of her present life.
But the most memorable moment is its successor, “Haunted,” which opens with a lyrical nod to indie colleague Conor Oberst and his renowned “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” album with Bright Eyes: “I’ve been daydreaming about sleeping, but by the evening I’m wide awake.” After the brief ambient interlude “Panorama,” she evokes Elliott Smith’s “Angel in the Snow” on “Still Standing”: “An angel in the snow, accident prone,” she sings, portraying her father in a sardonic tone.
After she delivers the album’s most compelling line on “Liberty Tree” — “You were made in the image of God, but you look like your mom in this picture of us falling in love that night” — and plays a gutted voicemail on “Never Going Back!” the album slows with “Lost Parade” and “Other Plans,” leaning on “I Can’t Wait,” featuring Cameron Winter, to bring it back together.
The now 32-year-old Bridgers has seen a lot more life in the six years since her last solo album. For a singer-songwriter who first unveiled “Killer” at 20 — a track that explores the weary acceptance of a destructive romance — there’s an even deeper intimacy with pain as she turns to decipher its bruised wisdom. Her third solo album delivers plenty of visceral moments: “You won’t have to believe in magic. Leave it to me and I’ll make it happen,” she angellicaly delivers on “As Above.”
By the album closer, “Lost Weekend (Reprise),” she’s found solace in the wreckage. “Now I can’t see any stars in the sky. When a dream comes true, a fantasy dies. But, we’re gonna be all right, me and you,” she promises.
The fantasy may die, but her songs hold reality together.
Isaac Rozwadowski is a 2024 graduate of Wausau East High School, currently enrolled at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where he shares his talents as an editor for the MSU Reporter. He is a multifaceted writer, relentless listener and shares a belief that good music can shape a lifetime.
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