PHOEBE BRIDGERS - what's the deal?

To put it another way, it’s not a big deal for an artist like her to strike a “Boomer nerve” or snap at an uncool guy like Clapton. In fact, it’s expected!

And it's not like she went out of her way to do it, it's one line on the album that a reporter asked her about. (And then NME and others turned it into a clickbait headline.)

But I posted it on FB yesterday for some Friday entertainment, and stirred up a satisfactory amount of outrage. Including lots of "I'VE NEVER HEARD OF HER WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS." Fish in a barrel, but kind of fun.

That's funny. I didn't think even many Boomer Music Fans™ cared much about Clapton.

If you're a dentist with a stratocaster you sure as fuck do. Ever been to The Gear Page?

Lol. My dentist is that guy too.

I have a friend's dad like that (he collects signed guitars and mounts 'em on the wall - don't know if Slowhand is represented).

Can’t believe that this guy who has been thought of as a bore for most of the last 50 odd years is finally being taken down a peg

Lol

Got myself to the point where I don’t mind the existence of Clapton’s latter day output, just don’t care to listen to it. Just now occurred to me on another thread that Richard Thompson does what I would want someone like him to do or think he should do so I guess he is The Thinking Man’s Eric Clapton, to damn him with faint praise.

boring shelves too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFiYTs7EWsU

that's pretty funny

Great stuff, thanks!

wonder if she regrets covering an SKM song now.

still a good song and a very good cover of it

wonder if she regrets covering an SKM song now.

I'm expecting "Bridgers pulls SKM cover off of streaming services" to be a headline within a week or two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bOigld3D1k

i really like this performance, i think this version of "kyoto" is better than the album version

it's a wonderful performance of I Know The End also, the fan-videos are a nice touch for climax

I agree about “Kyoto,” but she seems bored with her own material.

don't agree with this ^

i think she is a relatively reserved performer who also probably feels somewhat awkward / conflicted doing all these online sessions to promote the album. in interviews and other performances, she seems more engaged

idk, even if she is bored with it, maybe that means she'll write new songs sooner or something

(agree the fan videos were a really nice touch on I Know The End, which is absolutely one of my favorite songs of the year)

i shouldn't say "i don't agree" ... more like "i read it differently" :)

the red rocks performance was incredible, look it up

yeah that was great, whole album live

Some really beautiful versions on CBS too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7sYhuYroHo

I don't know if this was linked before and it's a year and a half old, but this boygenius performance is off the hook amazing, particularly the take on Me and My Dog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96wDhimQ6nw&t=1018s

hm

https://youtu.be/96wDhimQ6nw

literally every time i watch them play Me & My Dog (in any session, not just this one ^) I get the shivers when Phoebe screams her part at the end

i must be nearly 2 years and, i dunno, 40 or 50 views in?

this record's production sounds significantly fuller and better on my proper headphones than earbuds, haven't encountered this level of discrepancy between those in recent memory

i've been playing dead
my whole life
and i get this feeling
whenever i feel good
it will be the last time.

this album is an out and out masterpiece

one uncomfortable thing about her songwriting is how literally autobiographical it is. i always kind of resisted songwriting like that, and appreciated how bob dylan, even at his most confessional, would disguise his experiences in several layers of myth, just enough to give the people in life plausible deniability (somewhat not really).

however, the literalism of bridgers' lyrics seem essential to the enterprise. something about affirming the absolute reality of one's biography in an era when our identities are spread across tech platforms and like political affiliations. which is another way of saying the album feels very grounded, in a way that might have seemed naive if every song didn't hit so hard and true.

How does this new album compare to her earlier Stranger in the Alps? I couldn't click with that one, even as I recognized her obvious talent.

the production is more ambitious.

xp i think there's still a layer of myth here, or at least a fascination with urban legend that keeps it just outside of "absolute reality"

fwiw I almost gave up on Stranger in the Alps after four or five listens, but two songs from it came up on shuffle relatively close together and they both wowed me and that was the key to unlocking it.

for me, the song that sold me was "Motion Sickness."

when i learned it was about ryan adams, i was disappointed at first. it felt gossipy or something. but then i thought more about it and realized it was still a great song and an honest song. i don't think she was trying to trash him in it -- even though that would have been her prerogative, i don't think that would have made for a good song. but it's really about her experience, being disillusioned with some charismatic jerk she was infatuated with and still despite herself misses. (i've been there).

this, though, probably stung ryan adams, especially in a song that is so much better than anything he's ever written:

And why do you sing with an English accent
I guess it's too late to change it now

I very rarely -- "Sara" an exception, maybe -- felt Dylan was an autobiographical or confessional a songwriter.

blood on the tracks is about his divorce. but he tells the story in a refracted way.

it's my favorite album.

and the distance is part of what makes it work. or that tension -- you know, "is this him talking again or is he singing from the perspective of some rambler in the old west"?

Mine too, but at the risk of pedantry, I'd say it's "an album in which a guy and his wife divorce." Dylan isn't even much of a storyteller: he shares jokes, plagiarizes Americana, quotes Scripture, steals his ideas about women from Westerns.

sure, he takes you on a journey, but "finds in it, after all, a place for the genuine."

'if you see her say hello' and 'shelter from the storm' - the heart of the album - don't feel like pastiche.

Agree.

Back to Bridgers!

people use "refracted" to describe clever, nonlinear narratives in art as if the common experience of refraction is to look at your hand through a swarovski crystal dolphin in sunlight. oooooo. but our most common experiences with applied refraction are through corrective or camera lenses, which aim to give just an accurate image of reality.

good point

write-in vote for "fractured"

your favourite Punisher songs, now with strings! https://phoebebridgers.bandcamp.com/album/copycat-killer

this version of Kyoto is gorgeous.

it doesn't work very well to me, the vocals feel quite detached from the backing. maybe they should have slowed it down a little?

sappier sickly string arrangements def not what i want from my phoebe bridgers :(
(you too, julien baker!)

the strings sound great on the album version of “savior complex”