Phoebe Bridgers: Lost Weekend album review – Death becomes her
A devastatingly funny meditation on mortality, love and the complicated business of letting go
Lost Weekend is Phoebe Bridgers’ highly anticipated third album, a hefty 16-track meditation on the loss of her father that, in her signature style, is abyssal in its depth of introspection. Fans of 2020’s Punisher will be familiar with Bridgers’ preoccupations with death and the complex relationship with her father (see ‘Kyoto’, for instance). Honouring this continuity, she weaves in motifs from that album in the form of a haunting ‘Graceland Too’ melody and ghostly interlude ‘Lost Parade’ which feels like it could have been recorded behind the curtain of the Punisher tour.
In Lost Weekend, death isn’t abstract, it’s tangible. The opening line of ‘The Outside’ arrests us with gallows humour: ‘Crying in a suit and tie but you should see the other guy’. Delivered by a vocoder (a signature sonic accent throughout), it seems to embody the numb disassociation she describes. The whole album is littered with these lean, layered and precise one-liners that fall somewhere between funny and devastating (perhaps the influence of Bridgers’ partner and co-writer on many tracks, Bo Burnham). ‘Bobby’ is a gushing love song dedicated to him (‘this could be the end of wanting’) and sits in stark contrast to ‘The Governor’s Waltz’ which depicts a flatlining romance.
Many of these songs could live in the same universe as Punisher, but their emotional and sonic range is more extreme. Outlying folky moments come in ‘Never Going Back!’ and ‘Haunted’, featuring backing vocals from Boygenius bandmates Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker. King of abstract lyricism Cameron Winter appears on ‘I Can’t Wait’ which depicts the dual personality of an alcoholic with its hook ‘Hyde Jekyll Hyde’. ‘Lost Weekend (Reprise)’ is the record’s final eulogy, a sweet song of growing acceptance and nuanced grief. ‘He never made it a day in a shirt / He’s not coming back as a bird, he’s not coming back’ combines the foundational elements of this record: humour, pain and mortalism.
Lost Weekend is released by Dead Oceans and is out now; picture: Olof Grind.