‘Lost Weekend’ review: Phoebe Bridgers reckons with love and lost

Lost Weekend, the latest from Phoebe Bridgers, finds the singer facing the contrasting highs and lows of life and fame.

On first listen, the third studio album from Phoebe Bridgers, the haunted Lost Weekend, there are standouts amongst standouts. Songs that generate the same elusive wails of her best, be it the rapturous album closer “I Know the End,” or the boygenius hit “Me & My Dog,” where her vocals hit a piercing fever pitch.

Or the numbers that highlight her varied, diaristic lyricism, be it in alt-country folk songs or the forever homages to Elliot Smith. It takes the second listen, and then the third, for the album to become more than just the hits, transforming into a wholly engrossing escape into the singer’s processing.

It might not have a ghost on the cover, but Lost Weekend feels a lot more like a haunting than her debut, Stranger in the Alps. Contemplative lyricism marries the sonic notes of ethereal folk, conjuring images of late-night drives beneath the oppressive weight of a starry sky.

Phoebe Bridgers lingers on notes of loss and new love.

In a dissertation on grief, the pervasive solitude of insomnia, the apathy of a romance run dry and of new love, and the messy, complex ways in which our perception of self changes with the tides of time, Bridgers continues to find musical growth without derailing from her signature sound. The rustic and earthy sound gives way to sequences of distortion, the simple melodies building on one another for the anticipated but few “big” moments.

Between Bridgers and her boygenius bandmates, Lucy Dacus in particular, they’ve helped catapult a new wave of songstresses in that many of their songs read as if they were journal entries. And kudos when it’s due, Bridgers continues to be a master of flirting with vagueness while making direct points.

We can all glean who she’s talking about due to her own popularity and spotlight – there’s no real question about who “Bobby” is. But, despite some internet fervor, there’s nothing in the lyrics themselves that’s begging for dissection. Instead, the singer plays with ideas and motifs that weave throughout the album’s tapestry.

The collaboration with Alex G builds a welcome cohesion to the album.

There’s a lot of hands in the pot here, but the notable influence comes from Alex G, with Lost Weekend playing with interludes that could’ve come straight from his 2019 album, House of Sugar. These notes of distortion that spring to life in the mirage of sound at the end of “Lost Weekend” make up the whole of “Paranorma,” and come through in the vocoder effects in “The Outside,” help to manifest something tangible. We feel the barrage of emotions Bridgers feels, sinking into that out-of-time effect of panic attacks in bathroom stalls and the 4 am hours of hazy isolation.

That ghostly ambiance could so easily define the album. And while Lost Weekend finds its succinct cohesion in those ambient effects, it’s punctuated by lively bursts of enthusiasm that help give the album a much-needed sense of rigor. Those are the aforementioned standouts, the songs that, outside of listening to the album straight through, we’ll return to time and time again. Thank god “Lost Boys” (the album’s weakest) was a fluke.

Because a song like “Bobby,” with its peppy infatuation and bright vocals, is so comparatively infectious. It’s a love song in plain terms that sings of life-changing romance through the mundanities of everyday life, of a vibrator gathering dust, singing in the shower, and living in controlled chaos.

Lost Weekend is a gorgeous listen beginning to end but finds notes of jubilance that stand out.

Between “The Governor’s Waltz” and “Bobby,” a formative doubleheader, Bridgers finds absolution and truth through the fear of vulnerability. The former in how she hopes for the new lover in her ex’s life to assume her position without the same insecurities, and how she wills for the relationship to end.

The throughline that links the line “You promised that you’d never leave. But maybe you’ll do it for me” to “Now you’re walkin’ around with my heart on your sleeve. And I’m right here, bleeding” in “Bobby” is astonishing. A singer who falls out of love only to find someone who reignites the desire to trust in someone else to see her for who she is.

It’s funny because for a singer whose vocals crest notes of deceptive sweetness, her lyrics profess someone blunt, harsh, even, in trying to deal with all of their inner tumult. The darkly whimsical notes of her best efforts are so potent because they carry with them the realities of the world.

This could be the end of wanting.

From alluding to a pregnancy scare to the underlying theme of carrying the weight of her father’s death, Lost Weekend finds the singer in the midst of near-constant inner battles, warring with expectations, fame, and the loss of a figure who, in life, she’d yet to fully understand or deal with.

These notes of reflection, pockets of memory, and the images that define our youth in ways that aren’t definable in the moment offer the greatest warmth in her lyrics. There’s no full sense of healing or forgiveness, but the acutely human realization that our parents are fallible, and more than what our memories make of them.

As Bridgers seemingly closes the chapter on certain moments of her life in Lost Weekend, she also threads through the note of remembrance. Her father isn’t coming back, not “as a bird,” but she’ll remember him, always.

Phoebe Bridgers maintains her sense of humor even through the tumult of grief.

Even the songs that don’t reach the heights of the album’s best, like the bluegrass-inspired “Haunted,” and the somber “As Above,” maintain a cohesiveness that makes for a fully realized album. “The Governor’s Waltz” is the singer’s closest attempt at capturing the diluted rhythm of Elliot Smith, while “Still Standing” recalls notes of “I Know the End.” The back half of the album blends, but even that feels intentional, as Bridgers writes about “dreaming of sleeping” and wandering through the haze of change.

And throughout it all, her capacity for self-deprecation and insightfulness remains true. From accident-prone angels to the clumsy creations of the world, talking too much, and realizing the extent to which we hurt and bury that hurt, Lost Weekend remains a finely tuned examination of best efforts soured by faulty mental health and human error. It’s a Phoebe Bridgers album; sincerity comes with the promise of self-effacing humor.

Six years on since her sophomore album, Punisher, and she’s a much different public figure than she once was. Her immediate push into fame went hand-in-hand with the pandemic, with new fans latching onto her dry approach to life with the same parasocial fervor that’s come to infect any person or thing with a “fandom.” She was a girl in a skeleton onesie who had a headline-making romance with another hot-item figure, and her “cool girl” aesthetic, with a globe setting, very public courting, and the hype surrounding boygenius, made Bridgers more of an idea than an artist.

The bottom line.

It’s a tale as old as time, and Bridgers confronts this with frank honesty in what is amounting to be her best effort yet in Lost Weekend. With its ghostly ambiance and all-consuming instrumentation that wears the Alex G collaboration with pride, it’s an immense effort that unravels, unpacks, and pieces together the facade and inner workings of a woman in the process of learning, finding love, and dealing with loss, and all of the imbalance that goes with it. The album, in contrast, is a balanced effort that speaks to a singer’s specific vision and confidence, singing with candor about life’s mess. It’s so specifically her while showing the necessary growth to move past the skeletons.

Lost Weekend is out now and available to stream. 

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Image courtesy of Dead Oceans.