Looking for a new favorite album that will rip your heart out but also make you think of the happiest moments of your life? Phoebe Bridgers’ new album “Lost weekend” is just the thing. I do have one suggestion for your listen.

Don’t listen to it for the first time while driving down the interstate. Great for 5th time listening. Just not first.   

Phoebe Bridgers is an indie folk artist, famous for creating mass existential crisis and also for her hits “Scott Street” and “Motion Sickness”. Bridgers has not released a solo studio album in six years. The last two of those six years, she disappeared almost completely from the public eye. Many believed she would never make music again.  

August 14, she released her new album consisting of 16 tracks titled “Lost Weekend” after the announcement of her Lost Weekend World Tour. 

As a long-time fan of Bridgers, the announcement had me jumping up and down. Literally, I was actually jumping.

My schedule is packed and I didn’t have time to sit down and listen to the album all at once. This meant, the last four songs were listened to while driving down I-35 in my red mini cooper on my way to scoop ice cream for five hours at work. A poor choice, given the final two tracks left me with full body chills and a face full of tears. 

The album starts with new creative tracks “The Outside”, “Lost Boys”, “Kill me”, “The Governor’s Waltz” and “Bobby”. They play with Phoebe’s typical breathy vocals and emotionally indepth, metaphorical lyricism, while also mixing in new and fun sounds. There’s distorted vocals and layered production of breath work, everyday sounds such as hanging up the phone and electronic instrumentation. As the album inches closer to the end, there is a sense of freedom in the lyrics of the songs, not heard in previous Phoebe songs. 

This feeling caught me by surprise given that most of Bridgers’ songs in her previous albums “Stranger in the Alps” and “Punisher” are very accepting of sadness. She resides in it. That’s just the way she has accepted herself to be. 

 This album is different. 

 This feeling of hope and freedom especially stood out during the final two tracks “As Above” and “Lost Weekend (The Reprise)”. 

“As Above” is a memoriam of Bridgers letting herself free from her time with her since broken up band Boygenius with members Lucy Dacus and Julian Baker. She includes lyrics from the song “Afraid of Heights”, one of the last songs ever written by the band. These songs will always be a part of her but she is no longer attached to the emotions she felt when writing them. She can now view them from above instead of completely absorbing them. She’s not afraid of heights anymore; she now sees that she actually has a better view from up above. 

The final track “Lost Weekend (The Reprise)” was the tip over the edge from chills to tears. As memories of my grandfather flooded my memory and apparently also my tear ducts. 

“I still live by the things he taught me” breaks me as Bridgers’ describes a memory of her deceased dad teaching her how to forgive. 

All of a sudden I’m back in that high backed chair, pushed into the glass table in the living room, my grandma to my left, my grandpa to my right, a deck of cards in my little, six year old hands. I look down at the cards. It’s my turn to deal. I cut the cards and flail them around in an attempt to shuffle. 

“Here I’ll show you,” my grandpa says, noticing my struggle.

I set the cards down and his wrinkled hands grab them. He puts his thumbs on the top of the deck and pushes down. “See, like this,” he says. “Now you try.”

He places the deck back on the table and I envision his hands and mimic them with my own. I place my thumbs on the top of the two stacks of cards, release them, and they begin flowing together. 

“Good job Ava! You did it!” Grandpa says.

Phoebe continues to sing.

“You love me and I won’t ever let you forget. Not yet.”

I’ve now switched times. It’s present day and I’m walking down the hall of the same house I played so many rounds of cards in, ruminating on my grandfather’s words.

“Sandra’s down the hall doing the laundry if you want to see her.”

Grandma. Grandma’s down the hall. 

He doesn’t know I’m his granddaughter.

Tears are streaming down my face as I turn a curve and merge onto the offramp for my exit onto Johnson Drive. The lyrics hit me deep but as Phoebe continues to sing “oh ooo o oh oo oo ah oooo o” and a distorted orchestra plays in the back I’m filled with hope. I remember the lyric just before “We’re gonna be alright me and you.” 

This time a hopeful happy memory plays over the song. 

I bend over to give my grandpa a hug as he sits in his cream cushioned chair. 

“I love you, I’ll see you soon,” I say close to his ear so he can hear. I brave saying the words every time, but only hear them in return a fraction of it. 

As I lean up I hear “I love you too, sweetie.”

He may not know me. But he knows he loves me. And I’ll never let him forget.

I often catch myself lingering on the negative moments of my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s. Phoebe made me think of that bad memory but then overpowered it with a good one. This album has a special ability to make you remember the terrible times but ultimately at the end remember the good ones. It makes you realize that both hold value and deserve space and neither define who you are. This album is a masterpiece and I would recommend it to any empathic soul or burnt out body. Maybe just not while driving down I-35.