Phoebe Bridgers doesn't write love songs as much as songs about
the impact love can have on our lives, personalities, and
priorities. Punisher, her fourth release and second solo album,
is concerned with that subject. To say she writes about
heartbreak is to undersell her blue wisdom, to say she writes
about pain erases all the strange joy her music emanates. The
arrival of Punisher cements Phoebe Bridgers as one of the most
clever, tender and prolific songwriters of our era. Bridgers is
the rare artist with enough humor to deconstruct her own meteoric
rise. Repeatedly praised by publications like The New Yorker, The
New York Times, GQ, Pitchfork, The Fader, The Los Angeles Times
and countless others, Bridgers herself is more interested in
discussing topics on Twitter, deadpanning meditations on the
humiliating process of being a person, she presents a sweetly
funny flipside to the strikingly sad songs she writes. Fittingly,
Punisher is fascinated with, and driven by, that kind of
impossible tension. Whether it's writing tweets or songs,
Bridgers's singular talent lies in bringing fierce curiosity to
slimy and painful things, interrogating them until they yield up
answers that are beautiful and absurd, or faithfully reporting
the reality that, sometimes, they are neither. Bridgers pulls
together a formidable crew of guests, including the Julien Baker,
Lucy Dacus, Christian Lee Hutson and Conor Oberst as well as
Nathaniel Walcott (of Bright Eyes), Nick Zinner (of the Yeah Yeah
Yeahs), Jenny Lee Lindberg (of Warpaint), Blake Mills and Jim
Keltner as well as her longtime bandmates Marshall Vore (drums),
Harrison Whitford (guitar), Emily Retsas (bass) and Nick White
(keys). The album was mixed by Mike Mogis, who also mixed
Stranger In The Alps. On the album's epic, freewheeling closer,
"I Know The End," Bridgers orchestrates wails and horns, drums
and electric guitar into a sumptuous doomsday swirl, culminating
in her own final whispered roar. This is Punisher in a nutshell:
devastating elegance punctuated by a moment of deeply campy
self-awareness.
