To anyone on the outside, the six years it’s been since Phoebe Bridgers released Punisher have been packed full of everything you could possibly want as a musician building a career. Her portfolio now boasts collaborations with Taylor Swift and Paul McCartney and Grammy wins for her work with Boygenius – things most people could only dream of ever achieving, never mind before they reach 30. However, Lost Weekend instead finds Bridgers in a tender place as she grapples with both the loss of her father, the end of one relationship and the nervous excitement as another blossoms.
Where previous works have leant on more stripped-back, acoustic arrangements to allow space for the devastation of her lyrics to set in, the production choices here make this the most sonically interesting album of hers to date. Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska are back in the production hot seat but this time, she has also enlisted the help of some friends along the way for that bigger, more cinematic sound. For even casual fans of Alex G, you barely have to glance at the credits to realise he is responsible for the eerie distortion present on tracks like “Panorama” and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jack Antonoff got involved too, with his fingerprints all over the joyful poppiness of “Lost Boys”.
By now, Bridgers’ strained relationship with her father isn’t a new subject within her music, but Lost Weekend finds her at her most candid and vulnerable about it. With him having passed away in 2022, she’s now reckoning with grief: a weird and intense thing that forces you to face a lot of emotions and memories you don’t necessarily want dragged to the surface. “Still Standing” finds her recalling a difficult childhood memory as she struggles to conjure the appropriate for a parent dying. On “Never Going Back!” she reminds herself that “The way it used to be / is not the way it is” before a voicemail from her dad closes the track.
It perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that the singer also uses Lost Weekend to chronicle heartbreak and finding new love alongside her experiences of grief. She uses the title track as an opportunity to finally address the fact that she was engaged to Paul Mescal before calling it off, whilst “The Governor’s Waltz” presents itself as a subtle dig at the actor’s new partner, and “Haunted” offers an honest, no thrills depiction of the heartbreak that followed.
It’s not all rooted in sadness, though. The album also reveals a side to Bridgers that is giddy with love, with “Bobby” being the most joyful song she’s ever put out as it perfectly captures the all-consuming bliss of a love that finally feels stable and comfortable.
Ultimately, despite the tumultuous few years Bridgers has faced, Lost Weekend triumphs as her strongest body of work to date.
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