ALBUM REVIEW : Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers

Punisher album artwork.
[image from : source]

Alt-folk songwriter Phoebe Bridgers makes a big return with her sophomore album, Punisher. 

Phoebe Bridgers is one of those innate storytellers. In 2017, she set herself up as a prolific songwriter with her standout track "Motion Sickness" off her debut album Stranger in the Alps, as she weaved a poignant, auto-biographical narrative through affective lyrical metaphors and a melody that has haunted me every day since the first time I heard it. 

Since then, Bridgers took some time to become an experienced collaborator. 2018 saw her form boygenius with fellow alternative stars Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and release a self-titled EP together. In 2019, she teamed up with Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst to create Better Oblivion Community Center. She even lended her voice on a handful of songs on the latest album from The 1975. 

Released on Thursday, 18 June 2020—a day early in order to respect the Juneteenth holiday—Punisher has Phoebe Bridgers make the long-awaited return to her solo sound. Her starkly honest narratives are eerie as always, and reach deep within you to create a feeling you didn't know you needed to feel. She paints vignettes reminiscent of the folk trailblazers of the 1960s and 70s, but with a modern penchant for the deadpan. Her sadness isn't just for the sake of being sad, it's a catharsis, a reflection, a coming to terms with the horrors of our internal and external worlds. 

"Garden Song," the first single released from this record, captures this catharsis and turns it into something tangible. Through a dream-like setting, Bridgers reveals her fears, but also her hopes and dreams, too. And by the end of the song, her voice soars with a child-like wonder as she observes, "I don't know how but I'm taller" and hushes to reveal that "The doctor put her hands over my liver / And she told me my resentment's getting smaller."

There's a great deal of hope on this record, even when she writes about a failed relationship on "I See You." Despite everything wrong, she's still able to admit, "I feel something when I see you," and she can make room to leave the window open to "Let the dystopian morning light pour in." This hope in her lyricism is part of what makes her such a good storyteller; even when our worlds feel like they're crashing in on us, Bridgers captures the human tendency to keep a shred of faith, whether it's for better or for worse. 

The tender "Moon Song" highlights Bridgers' songwriting skill through the uncanny details she uses to create her own world and wrap her listeners up within it. She utters everyday, domestic scenes such as discussing how "We hate 'Tears in Heaven' / But it's sad that his baby died" or singing at a birthday, but with such a specificity that it feels as though it's playing out right in front of you, like some sort of distorted daydream. 

Bridgers also experiments with her sound on this album, notably as she moves from the pastoral and into the big city on "Kyoto." Over a bright horn section her voice seems as loud and clear as ever, disclosing her love-hate relationship with being on tour. But her folk sound is also as strong as ever, as she unfolds the story of a woman who "could do anything she wants to" through a delicate banjo accompaniment on "Graceland Too."  

The final song on the record, "I Know the End," offers Bridgers' take on the apocalypse song, a long-standing songwriting tradition that's right up her lyrical alley. After verses of The Wizard of Oz-inspired imagery, she announces decidedly, "The billboard said the end is near / I turned around, there was nothing there / Yeah, I guess the end is here." Despite everything going on internally and in the world around her, she accepts it, almost prophetically. Even the way the song is titled "I Know the End" suggests that Brigders is familiar with this feeling, as if she has a personal relationship with the apocalypse itself.

Bridgers looks to the sky on Punisher's album artwork as if the end of the world is just above her, and she can see it closing down on her, but she can't do anything to stop it. And she doesn't try. Because maybe this is just the catharsis we need. 

Listen to Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers on Spotify and Apple Music.