![]() ![]() STEREOGUM: I read something recently about how you work on your albums in order. It’s a love song, for sure, but it’s also about myself - my own growth. ![]() The more your actions might push towards the things you want happening. This song is more about how - at the risk of being corny - manifesting things the more you think about stuff. “Smoke Signals” is a love song about waking up to your reality, in a way, finding someone who shares the same interests as you. STEREOGUM: Right, I remember it being described as a spiritual cousin to “Smoke Signals.” When you say “sequel,” do you think it literally answers back to that song?īRIDGERS: I think it’s just another love song. I’m never going to release a fucking pop song that goes on the radio so I was like, “Let’s embrace it and release whatever we want first.” The instruments and the voices, we were very picky about those things. It has the least stuff on it but it’s still very produced. It just felt not too weird, not too different from the music I make, and I was proud of it - it stood out to me. PHOEBE BRIDGERS: I think it felt like a bridge from my last record to this record, and also my lead single to the first record was “Smoke Signals,” which is really similar in form and subject matter. Why did that one feel like the introduction to the album in both instances? STEREOGUM: Punisher starts with an instrumental track, and then “Garden Song” is the proper opener and the lead single. ![]() Now that you can hear Punisher for yourself, read along below to get the stories behind the album. She walked us through each song on Punisher, from inspiration to songwriting decisions to the host of guests that accompanied her. We recently caught up with Bridgers, who was calling from home in LA during quarantine. ![]() A few years after Stranger In The Alps, Bridgers’ life has changed a whole lot, and a lot of Punisher grapples with how you go about embracing that when the same old demons still follow you. But Bridgers’ albums are very much rooted in her own personal experience. A sense of drift, being young today and seeking to make sense of when you’ll actually feel present in your own life. There are ways you can hear broad, generational conditions in her writing. Across Punisher, her words are biting, hilarious, open-hearted, therapeutic, turning from unflinching honesty one moment to a sardonic punchline the next. While there is a subtle intricacy to Punisher musically - sparse or meditative compositions lightly embellished by orchestration, rare outliers like the catchy “Kyoto” or the climactic “I Know The End” broadening the album’s scope - Bridgers is more of a lyrics-first artist. It follows some of the same structures and approaches as Stranger In The Alps, but refines and expands and deepens them. The good news is that Punisher delivers in all the ways one might hope. That makes Punisher a funny proposition: It simultaneously doesn’t feel like a sophomore album at all given Bridgers’ output and how well we’ve come to know her songwriting, but also like a sophomore album that arrives with even more pressure and attention than the usual highly-anticipated second outing. In just a handful of years, she’s released several albums, already building up a diverse and complex body of work. The following year, she formed a trio with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker called boygenius then, last year, she formed a band with one of her heroes, Conor Oberst, and called it Better Oblivion Community Center. But in the ensuing years, Bridgers’ stature as a respected musician and generational voice has risen significantly, and quickly. With that album alone, she was already greeted as one of the most exciting, assured young songwriters newly on the scene. In 2017, Phoebe Bridgers released her debut Stranger In The Alps. ![]()
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