Phoebe Bridgers

Los Angeles' singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, a member of Boygenius with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, debuted solo with Stranger in the Alps (2017), the work of an introspective artist who rarely focuses on the melody (Motion Sickness) and has a passion for the macabre (Killer, Funeral and Mark Kozelek's You Missed My Heart).

She formed Better Oblivion Community Center with Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes), which debuted with the album Better Oblivion Community Center (2019).

Punisher (2020) is a more confused work, with generally inferior material. Mostly it has bland songs with bland arrangements, and Garden Song (arranged by Christian Lee Hutson and Marshall Vore), Halloween (one of several collaborations with Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes), and Moon Song (pretty much the only song that is truly hers alone) are the least tedious. The one venture into heavily arranged power-pop, Kyoto (composed by Whispertown 2000's songwriter Morgan Nagler and by her drummer Marshall Vore), is almost an admission that the rest has a limited appeal. I Know the End is the only song that attains some kind of pathos, and it's another exception to the rule, with a rousing Pink Floyd-ian crescendo, thanks to the combined effort of composers and arrangers Hutson, Oberst and Vore.

Despite the hype, Boygenius's first full-length album, The Record (2023), was underwhelming.

After a six-year hiatus, Phoebe Bridgers released her third solod album, Lost Weekend (2026), ostensibly a concept about her father. Despite being produced by Jack Antonoff, Alex Giannascoli, Tony Berg, Ethan Gruska and others, and being performed by a cast of 20+ players, some of them playing multiple instruments, the album is mostly devoid of dense arrangements, as if the core message was simplicity. There is an intimate domestic feeling in unassuming songs like Still Standing which projects into into the dreamy whispered Kill Me, the ethereal lullabye Governor’s Waltz the gentle country elegy Haunted and even into the catchy jangling folk-rock ditty Lost Boys. The notable exceptions are the rocking and noisy Bobby and the robotic dirge The Outside with only piano and electronic effects that opens the album and sound out of context (a futuristic manifesto for a nostalgic concept). Perhaps realizing that Bridgers' low-key singing and spartan arrangements can be monotonous, the producers try to enliven the piano lied As Above with a sudden explosion of Bjork-esque melodrama and the mournful Lost Weekend with a pointless coda of loud distorted electronica. The main drawback of the album is actually the lack of strong melodies.