One of Three Quick and Dirty Pop Reviews
Lost Weekend—Phoebe Bridgers
Charli XCX—Music Fashion Film
Ed note, this was originally going to be one big post, but now it’s going to be three.
I listened to each of these albums a couple times over the past two weeks. This was partially due to a recommendation from my brother, and partially due to each of them being well received by Fantano; this is embarrassing, but it is what it is. None of them particularly grabbed me at first, but all of them won me over at some point in the second or third listen. They felt logical to group together because they are all from this year, are fairly buzzy, and fit somewhat imperfectly into the label of “pop.” Arbitrarily, I’m starting with the least definitively “pop” album of the three, and getting poppier as I go along. Thus, without further ado.
Phoebe Bridgers—Lost Weekend
I’m not the biggest fan of Bridgers’ work. There’s a couple of her songs that I like, but at album length nothing has really clicked in the past. I feel like I've got her musical niche heavily covered between older favourites—Stars and Broken Social Scene—and singer-songwriters I actively follow—Adrienne Lenker and Sharon van Etten. While I believe Bridgers has good instincts as a composer, I am consistently frustrated by two things: her breathy vocal quality i and her lyrics, which I find off-puttingly millennial ii. The result? Instrumentation I think is really cool that supports vocal performances ranging between“I just don't care for it” to “actively irritates me, and then makes me wonder if that’s because I’m secretly a misogynist.”
This record does not get rid of these two nagging issues issues—the first single, “Lost Boys”, is an exemplar of them, as is “Governor's Waltz”. This opening run is where the record really threatens to lose me, and left me checked out on my first listen. Further spins had me pulled in again by “Bobby” which has great lead guitar, and some deftly integrated male-female harmonies. The title track shows an environment where Bridgers' voice shines: against a stripped down backing track, hanging lyrically on the dry exposition of a relationship and its end, closing with a shimmery synth solo and the sound of Bridgers' breathing, collaged. What a shame, then, that it is followed by “Haunted” which uses the chord progression of “Will The Circle be Unbroken” iii to plodding effect. “Haunted” escalates its instrumental and vocal intensity at each verse chorus cycle. Drums kick in, electric guitar picks up, vocal harmonies swell, and the track still feels slow and arbitrary. “Panorama” uses more lovely, ambient-tinged sound collage used as an interlude. “Still Standing” is another song with great instrumentation, but it made me realize another aspect of Bridgers’ songwriting that frustrates me, the use and abuse of tension. See, she is undeniably good at building tension, slow instrumental swells, introduction of new harmonies, and so on. And yet, in a way that’s tough to describe, I have been repeatedly disappointed or frustrated by the way this tension is resolved iv. In the past, I’ve found these resolutions either over-the-top and a bit corny, or fizzly, and “Still Standing” falls into the latter.
Nonetheless, Lost Weekend's excellent final quarter pushed me, kicking and screaming, into a positive overall impression. “I Can't Wait” builds and resolves its tension much more effectively. My top track on the album is its penultimate track “As Above” which is built around a relatively simple v but effective piano melody. It's pretty, it hits heavy emotional notes, and I've been working it in to my work playlists. I like the interpolation of Vampire Weekend in the line “I don't want to live forever, but I don't want to/ die. It hits a satisfying climax, and then returns to its main melody with a warm organ sound, and then takes its time fading out, another counter-example to my frustration with Bridgers' tension-release abilities. The title track's reprise doesn't blow me away, but is enough to park the train at the station.
Lost Weekend is Phoebe Bridgers' best work yet. It attains higher highs, and flows better start to finish than either of her other LPs. At the same time, I just don't see myself putting it on start to finish a year from now. Some of this comes from what I'd call a legitimate critique: the album grinds to a halt on tracks 2-4, and loses wind between the highs whenever she pulls out a banjo. But for the most part, this comes from being thirty two and listening to music for a fairly long time. I think if I was younger, and had listened to less indie and alt-country, I'd be more charmed by Bridgers. Still, I am likely to keep following her career, and I can see why so many people love this album. It won me over despite myself. The question of charm and branding becomes even more crucial in the next record I'm reviewing, Music, Fashion, Film. So stay tuned.
i I’ve sent catty text messages about how I’m begging her to use her diaphragm, but I mean I don’t really know, I’m not a vocal coach.
ii This falls even more into “je ne sais quoit” territory. One might call it narcissism of small differences, as the things that bug me come down to being frank and confessional, using names of antidepressants in lyrics, and other features of the last decade's blogosphere that one might find right here on acethetics.net
iii This is the kind of critical statement that I make and then feel terrified by, because I am not a musician, and I'm sure that someone out there knows that “actually it's inaccurate to say it's 'When The Circle' and you should describe it as this earlier blues standard that anyone who's picked up a guitar knows front to back.”
iv I linked “I Know the End” above, and it's another example of this idiosyncratic relationship I have to her music. There's probably thousands of people who find the primal scream combined with trumpets at the end of that song a satisfying conclusion. To me, it's an over-egged pudding.
v I honestly wondered if she'd bothered it from some movie soundtrack I'd heard, maybe a Hans Zimmer or something. I found a Reddit thread which mentioned “Right Where it Belongs” by Nine Inch Nails, and that clicked for me. Maybe not that song exactly, but if you take his oeuvre, particularly as a soundtrack composer, and sprinkle in a bit of Zimmer, you get something I'd call a direct influence.
