Reviews

Phoebe Bridgers – Lost Weekend

Six years after her breakthrough moment, Phoebe Bridgers’ third album is a timely reminder that more is frequently less.

It’s hard to believe it’s been six years since Punisher emphatically announced the arrival of Phoebe Bridgers. During the social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, her intimate compositions felt like an especially good fit. But Bridgers’ long-awaited third album Lost Weekend, dedicated to her late father who passed away in 2022, finds both the world and its creator in a very different place.

Since Punisher, we’ve grown accustomed to hearing Bridgers as part of a trio with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker in boygenius. While I was no great fan of 2023’s the record, its three distinct voices at least offered a diversity of tone that Punisher lacked. Post-boygenius, the absence of such variation is far more noticeable. Consequently, Lost Weekend sounds like an awful lot of Phoebe Bridgers, and its concerning lack of significant tempo and tonal shifts becomes wearing over the course of its sixteen tracks.

A hot-shot production team, which includes Alex G and the ubiquitous Jack Antonoff alongside regular Bridgers collaborators Ethan Gruska and Tony Berg, adds a professional sheen that sometimes smacks of compromise.

The more obviously Antonoff-inspired moments, such as icy opener “The Outside” and twinkling ballad “The Governor’s Waltz,” are slick yet oddly unremarkable, and really could be coming from a handful of other artists in the pop-rock realm. In contrast, Alex G’s influence looms so heavily over Lost Weekend’s strongest cuts (“Lost Boys” and “Haunted,” both of which he co-wrote) that I wonder if Bridgers would have been better off keeping things simple and co-producing the whole record with him? It might not have been stellar, but I imagine it would have been less muddled.

I have no particular axe to grind against Bridgers, who is evidently a talented and beloved songwriter, but I question why the critical community is losing its mind over a record as predictable and one-paced as Lost Weekend. If the record hinted at some of her songwriting limitations—the occasional clunky lyric, an odd penchant for Owl City-esque vocal inflections—this fundamentally flawed collection only serves to expose these further.

Listening to Lost Weekend, I can practically visualise the glossy comedy-drama series that it seems destined to soundtrack. Insufferable characters, a gargantuan budget, a few Hollywood names attached—a forgettable Apple TV original, basically. Sadly, with its bloated cast of collaborators, excessive runtime, and strangely hollow centre, Lost Weekend lands at a similar level. More Shrinking than Severance.

Lost Weekend is out now via Dead Oceans.