By Mick Dillon and Scout Nicholson / The Jambar
After a six-year hiatus, alternative musician Phoebe Bridgers released her third solo album, “Lost Weekend,” in August, with 18 tracks and a runtime of 53 minutes.
Though the album features a large supporting cast of composers and lyricists, “Lost Weekend” is a deeply personal project that serves as a window into Bridgers’ pain.
Throughout the course of “Lost Weekend,” Bridgers illustrates sources of her pain coming from the loss of her father, her own self-sabotage and her struggles to let go of the past.
Bridgers began to retreat from the public eye in 2024 after releasing an album and EP with her band, boygenius. This year, Bridgers returned in a series of surprise, phone-free performances across the U.S. before rounding out with a show at Madison Square Garden, where she announced the release of “Lost Weekend.”
Bridgers assembled a list of well-known collaborators for this album including:
- Jack Antonoff
- Julien Baker
- Robert Burnham, known professionally as Bo Burnham
- Lucy Dacus
- Alex Giannascoli, known professionally as Alex G
- Maya Hawke
- Issac Wood
Also included in the album credits is Geese frontman Cameron Winter, under the pseudonym Son-Jon Johnson.
Alex G’s sound is scattered throughout the album providing the lead guitar for the majority of the tracks on “Lost Weekend.”
The album begins with “The Outside,” a song that appears to pay homage to Imogen Heap’s sound, utilizing vocal distortion over a slow-paced, melodic backtrack, similar to Bridgers’ more popular work.
The second track of “Lost Boys” was released two months prior to the album. The song amassed over 20 million Spotify streams, which distinguishes it as the project’s highest-streamed song. The accompanying music video highlights a medieval theme with a soft pop sound.
The third track is “Kill Me.” Despite its somber sound, in an interview with KRUI 89.7 FM, Bridgers said it is one of her favorites on the album.
“The Governors Waltz,” the fourth track, sees Bridgers take a more hopeful turn, providing contrast to her first two melancholic albums. That same energy is shown through “Bobby,” where Bridgers sings about her longtime boyfriend, Bo Burnham.
“Bobby” is followed by the title track which showed shades of Claire Boucher, known professionally as Grimes, showcasing the abstract breadth of Bridgers’ catalogue.
Bridgers’ song arrangement and attention to transitions shines through on the latter half of the album, which features several tracks that blend together to maintain themes of pain and loss in a cohesive sound.
The album rounds off with the outro track, “Lost Weekend (reprise).” It only feels right that Bridgers closes off the album paying homage to her late father with a song full of intense emotion that encapsulates the overall feeling of “Lost Weekend.”
“I don’t know if you noticed throughout this whole album, but my dad is dead,” Bridgers said in the same interview. “So instead of kind of a white-hot kind of grief, it’s more about thinking about what I loved about him and what I learned from him. And it felt like a good way to end the album.”
Bridgers’ U.S. tour, The Lost Tour, begins Sept 15. In Indianapolis, featuring 23 shows opened by Alex G.