Phoebe Bridgers Awaits Spaceship Home in Second LP "Punisher"

Photo courtesy of the Phoebe Bridgers Facebook page

“I’ll find a new place to be from/ A haunted house with a picket fence.”

Exploring themes from existential philosophy to extraterrestrial existence, Phoebe Bridgers concludes her second masterpiece, Punisher, with the fittingly named track, “I Know the End.” Her repeated understanding of someone’s necessary departure is melancholy, soft, almost fragile. Wistful harmonies mark the chorus, as she vows to abandon the ideology of the Wizard of Oz and chase her own tornado instead of retreat. By the time the tune has finished, the music has crescendoed and dipped into a shouting choir with a warning - “The end is here!”

With two deceptively optimistic single releases, Bridgers initially seemed to have made a shift in her sound. “Garden Song” and “Kyoto” are light, with the former evoking her ever-popular reflective lyricism over a simplistic, modified acoustic guitar. The latter, a discussion on her strained relationship with her father, contains an up-tempo drumbeat, a shiny keyboard melody, and a horn section. “I don’t forgive you/ But please don't hold me to it,” she croons.

This presumed change in Bridgers’ music holds true in the entirety of the album, with a smaller presence of her classic baritone guitar and even more notably a loss of the warbly string section lauded in stand-out track “Smoke Signals” off of her debut LP Stranger in the Alps. In place of these markers comes experimentation with big, resounding choruses as well as a more pop-infused musical approach. What remains the same is Bridgers’ innate lyrical self-awareness, and her ability to turn even the most mundane moments into heart-wrenching scenes. 

She turns Halloween into an extended metaphor centered around “Being whatever you want” in a song by the same name, her lover wearing a mask to hide their identity and her grappling with their inability to be truthful without a disguise. “Chinese Satellite” pushes this narrative of imposter syndrome as she monologues the difficulties of pretending to be oneself. 

“Drowning out the morning birds/ With the same three songs over and over/ I wish I wrote it, but I didn’t, so I learn the words.” Keeping with a theme of otherworldly possibilities, weaved throughout nearly every track on the record, Bridgers wishes on a satellite instead of stars and hopes for a beam to take her home, all the while insisting that she, “Wants to believe.” Her seeking a place where she fits in is echoed in the title track. It serves as an homage to Bridgers’ late inspiration, Elliott Smith, as she untangles the myth behind his legacy. The song is once again a stripped-down effort, a cascading piano melody accompanied by electronic harmonies. She contradicts herself, stating, “But we never met, it’s for the best,” and deducing she would be unable to talk to Smith if given the chance due to her idealization of his music. 

Perhaps the most powerful song in the collection is “Graceland Too,” an ode to her boygenuis bandmate Julien Baker who features as a background vocalist in the chorus. The track chronicles the recovery of Baker along with the loneliness that comes with trying to find hope after self-reclamation. Dubbed background music for road trips by various critiques, Bridgers carefully treads the line of her Stranger in the Alps gloom and a newfound banjo-driven optimism. While the main character contemplates whether or not Elvis ever believed “That songs could come true,” a lighter theme of friendship emerges. Synth chords echo in the background and the fiddle subdues while Bridgers shares, “Said she knows she lived through it to get to this moment/ Ate a sleeve of saltines on my floor and I knew then/ I would do anything you want me to.” This simple commitment, a promise, marks the loyalty of her relationship with Baker and the genuine quality of their harmonies evokes the true vulnerability that is shared throughout this record. 

Punisher is an expansion on the world Bridgers has already created, a place where her whisper-like vocals meet confessional lyrics. She is a poet set to melody, a breath of truth in an industry dominated by tracks with a dozen or so co-writers. She may be “Not afraid to disappear,” as she claims in “I Know the End,” but we can only hope she won’t.