There is a moment on her third solo album, Lost Weekend, when Phoebe Bridgers asserts “I have no secrets, only feelings.” That has been one of the reasons she has connected with audiences in such a broad, cross-generational way. With and without boygenius, the Pasadena-born artist has become one of the essential names in international pop. And I’m talking about pop, not folk, because the roster of collaborators crosses genres. It’s amazing: from Paul McCartney to SZA, including Taylor Swift, The National, The Killers, or Metallica, to name just a few.
In these new lyrics, Bridgers tackles the controversial relationship with her father, who passed away a couple of years ago; she jokes about who will die first, whether it will be his partner or herself; she talks about a boyfriend who “kisses like a girl,” once again laying bare her bisexuality; she confesses that she’s always seeking the “exit” when she accompanies a relative to the hospital; she speaks of how hard it is to grow up, timing the album’s release with her 32nd birthday… The contents of Lost Weekend are, quite simply, the things that have happened to her since she released Punisher in 2020.
The complex relationship Bridgers has with her father had already surfaced individually within her discography. In “Would You Rather,” a track dedicated to her brother, she set them against their father in a very troubling way: “he’s half the man you are and you’re twice as tall.” Even “Kyoto,” one of her biggest hits, carried a verse full of anger toward her father for having botched the date of a birthday.
After a childhood marked by absences and addictions, Bridgers managed to reconcile with him to some degree in recent years, and when “Kyoto” became a success, the man even sent her a message saying: “you’ve been given a Grammy for our song.” In this album, Bridgers reflects on all of this particularly in “Still Standing” (“I still can’t imagine you dead, but you’re there every day”) and even more starkly in “Never Going Back!”. That piece largely consists of the repetition of a couple of phrases (“he’ll never come back, nothing will be the same again”) and the actual recording of a voicemail: “Phoebe, it’s Dad, I know you’re busy, being a rock star takes a lot of time, you’re everywhere, but call me if you can, I love you.”
The Peter Pan syndrome is the central theme of the single “Lost Boys,” while the theme of romantic love appears across several compositions. In the title track “Lost Weekend” she reveals that she nearly got married (to Paul Mescal) but “it was canceled.” “The Governor’s Waltz” closes with such a tangle between Phoebe, Mescal, and Gracie Abrams that it’s not surprising Taylor Swift would be hooked on this record. On the other hand, “Bobby” and “Liberty Tree” are dedicated to her latest partner, the comedian Bo Burnham, who also has some co-writing credits and contributes some backing vocals.
For those less interested in the tabloid side of things, Lost Weekend has plenty more to offer. If Bridgers’ writing is notably sparse and often falls short, there is still some instrumental work, some reprises, and more than one track that barely amounts to a paragraph, such as the contemplative “Panorama”; the album’s credits drift by unobtrusively—an harmonica by Conor Oberst, a guitar by Jon Brion, backing vocals from Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, and not to mention scores of different contributions from Jack Antonoff and Alex G, who co-produced the album. And beyond the spectacular “name-dropping,” the level of detail is such that you can find up to fourteen sound engineers credited per song on streaming platforms.
The good news is that none of this personnel, nor the themes of breakups, love, and death, translates into a production heavy with showy tricks. On the contrary, the album is defined by its quietness, which makes the moments when something does happen feel even more beautiful.
In that sense, the ending of Lost Weekend is particularly exhilarating; the two seconds of techno thumps that slip into “The Governor’s Waltz,” along with all its backing vocals; the ambient space in which the four lines of “Panorama” unfold, one of them being “if you drink, I’ll drink too”; the electronic finale of “Liberty Tree”; the way the country textures get roughened in “Haunted”; the various flourishes and the lovely additional voice of Son John-Johnson on “I Can’t Wait”—these are tricks undoubtedly learned from Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois (“Lost Boys”), The Age of Adz (“The Outside,” “Lost Weekend”) and especially Carrie & Lowell (“Kill Me”), but skillfully applied by as many as fifty contributors.
And at the center of all of it, of course, is Phoebe Bridgers’ voice. Especially when, in a deliberately calm album, she suddenly yells. This happens around the middle of the most beautiful track on the record, “As Above.” It’s the moment where she goes to a hospital with her mother and can’t help but want to leave. “I don’t want to live forever, but I don’t want to die either (…) you’re going to take me for granted, but I can cope with it.” Now in her thirties, Bridgers remains the voice of a generation.
