Phoebe Bridgers Makes Her Return With the Strangely Intimate “Lost Weekend”

Phoebe Bridgers’ successor to her 2020 album “Punisher” is just as cryptically intimate but brutally honest, the most Bridgers has been in her music yet. The album keeps her distinct sound, but introduces a folk-ballad feel and a distorted, trance-like lullaby.

“Lost Weekend” is Bridgers’ first solo album in six years, following a swift disappearance from public life after she wrapped the 2024 Grammy Awards and took home the most collective awards for both her solo work and with boygenius, her supergroup with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker (who make appearances harmonizing with Bridgers on “Haunted” and singing backup on “Lost Boys”). Her long-awaited new record fills in the gap for the two years she spent “lost” and out of the public eye, the complex personal losses she endured (death of a parent) and her love life.

Reflective tracks like the fragmented “I Can’t Wait” and title track “Lost Weekend” are the most cryptic, but lyrically interesting and bound to be overanalyzed. There is no linear narrative. “I am restoring the natural order/Lеarning the same lesson over and over again,” Bridgers sings on “Lost Weekend.” Bridgers rotates in subject; love and grief overlap, even amidst speculation behind meaning.

Alongside lively, country-style tracks “Liberty Tree,” “Haunted” and “Never Going Back!,” there are other upbeat tracks that offset the stillness and disquiet of tracks like “Kill Me” — love song “Bobby,” a potential tribute to partner Bo Burnham whose name (“Bobby”) reappears throughout the record in various tracks, and lead single “Lost Boys.” The latter’s music video, released in tandem with the track a few weeks before the album’s release, featured Bridgers as a Tolkien-esque elf in a Ren Fair suburbia accompanied by a gaggle of knights blowing e-cigarette smoke through the grates of their medieval armor.

The new record’s 16 tracks are textured and multilayered, with drone-like sounds and ambient noise in the background of tracks like the album’s opener “The Outside,” which opens with white noise and Bridgers’ voice processed through a vocoder. There’s a large cast of appearances on the album outside of the boygenius reunion, including indie musician Alex G on production and rumors of the band Geese’s Cameron Winters, credited with the alias Son-John Johnson, who sings backing on multiple tracks and a duet with Bridgers on “I Can’t Wait.”

Bridgers drops cryptic easter eggs in her lyrics, with most discussed and speculated in the track “The Governor’s Waltz,” which is evidently about actor ex Paul Mescal. “Since she took my place in my bed on that stage.” The question remains whether the “she” refers to a certain pop singer, Gracie Abrams, who happens to be dating the aforementioned ex and used the same bed sheets as Bridgers’ bedroom in a recreated bedroom stage prop.

“Lost Weekend”’s length is also almost overinflated because of skippable (unless you’re listening to a full run of the album) connective tracks, “Panorama” and “Lost Parade,” which are 56 seconds to two minutes of either instrumental (a quiet, distorted ambient fanfare) or sparse vocals. While “Punisher” was a play with acts, a climax and a resolute end, “Lost Weekend” is nonlinear and quiet until the end.

While the albums are in conversation with each other, it’s difficult to compare “Lost Weekend” to “Punisher,” the definitive isolated lockdown album. Bridgers’ new album is more experimental, but it hasn’t quite dethroned “Punisher” just yet. It does, however, get better with every listen.

8/10