Phoebe Bridgers opens her Moleskine

Journaling and Phoebe Bridgers

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0:31Every plan, including Unlimited, is $15 a month. And unlike ice cream, it won't drip down your wrist or look nothing like the picture. Does anyone have any cash? Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Charlie, do you or have you ever kept a journal? I kept a journal a lot when I was a kid. And frankly, probably once I got my phone, the journaling has not been as good.

1:02The phone is the enemy of the journal. And I have a similar situation where I used to journal. I don't anymore. But I did dig through some of my archives and found my old moleskin from 2016. How embarrassing. And this is relevant because the artist that we're going to talk about today is also known for religiously using a black moleskin journal just like this one. Oh.

1:33And I think their music reflects that kind of intimate diaristic quality. I'm talking about Phoebe Bridgers, and we're going to dig into her new album, Lost Weekend, today.

Welcome to Switched on Pop

1:45Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, can I read you a little bit of my journal from 2016? Oh, I am at the edge of my seat. This is when I went to New Zealand during my sophomore year of college and worked on an organic farm in exchange for room and board.

2:16In this particular adventure, I am trying to go visit a colony of gannet seabirds.

2:25Okay, here we go. Now it was around 10.30. The tides receded at 11 and came back around 5. The situation was grim, and I was reluctantly stealing myself for another day in Napier as I had already reluctantly paid and asked them outside if they were heading out. Maybe if the weather's good, they said. The sky was ominous, and it started raining as we drove, but when we got there, it looked okay. I'm going to skip ahead a little bit. The birds were spectacular. It was exhausting. I went over and got a ride with two New Zealand women back to me in the hostel writing this.

2:57Nervous to go to the farm tomorrow, but mostly okay. Good night. Riveting stuff, right? I would say exhaustive and also maybe the style of writing where you think, maybe one day someone will read this. Is this something that would, say, make a great song? I would hazard that diary entry would not, but I think it's a nice illustration of you can't just take your journals and turn them into music. There's actually a lot of artistry.

3:27I agree, and I will not be reading you my journals. Well, Phoebe Bridgers, and that's totally true about her moleskin obsession, by the way. There's an article from The Strategist, which is the New York magazine shopping guide where celebrities talk about their 10 essential things, and she names this moleskin journal as one of her essential items. And she's a singer-songwriter who's never been afraid to make her life the subject of her music. Her first album, Stranger in the Alps, was anchored by songs like Motion Sickness,

3:57which took aim at an older musician who had groomed her at a young age.

4:11Her next record, 2020's Punisher, included tracks like Kyoto, which detailed the strained relationship between her and her father. Now she's released Lost Weekend, and it's a meditation on a crazy six years in her life, starting the supergroup Boy Genius with Lucy Dacus and Julian Baker,

4:41dating and breaking up with high-profile actors, achieving a new level of fame and notoriety, and losing the same estranged father that she'd sung about on Punisher. I made it a day in a shirt He's not coming back as a bird He's not coming back Lost Weekend reprise. Like we were talking about, great artists take their personal life, their joys, their traumas,

5:12and they don't just put it right into the music. They transform it. They translate it. And Phoebe has actually commented on this. She did a hour-long radio show made for college radio stations called Lost Signal. And one of the things she said during that broadcast was, I certainly don't like when my lyrics are kind of poured over as really literal. I think my songwriting is getting

5:42less literal as time goes on. That's funny because I really do feel like her songs give the impression that they're emerging from a moleskin. They're so idiosyncratic. The language is often like of a place, a texture. The details of her music are definitely what makes it so compelling. But I want to resist the urge to read too deeply into those details. Like take the track, The Governor's Waltz.

6:13It begins with like a very real moment in her life, playing the governor's ball in 2021. I was the bell of the governor's ball. And then immediately in the next line, we get an image borrowed from The Shining. And you start to wonder, okay, how much of this is real or kind of her processing the memory of this event? Hiding in the bathroom

6:44Like Shelley Duvall That is a creepy lyric. Shelley Duvall is, Shelley Duvall is the actor who plays Jack Nicholson's wife. Jack Nicholson is running around being like, I just want to, you know, no work, no play. Creepy. And she's hiding in the bathroom. Wow. That's a stunning pairing. There's a lot of powerful, sometimes horrific, sometimes funny imagery like that on this album.

7:15They're part of a larger narrative of the highs and lows of life itself. So let's listen to some of the tracks on Lost Weekend and hear how the personal becomes universal. I'm really glad that you're going to walk me through this. When the album dropped, I was both overwhelmingly excited because not only do I love Phoebe, but I also love a lot of the collaborators that she's working with. And yet it's summertime and I just haven't really had the emotional capacity to sit with this work and feel it in the level of,

7:45you know, weight that it deserves. Right. You're still like hitting the dance floor with Madonna as we were discussing last week on the pod. Yep.

Opening Track The Outside

7:55It's going to get a little heavy at points, but fear not. This is a dark album at moments, but I think it's a really rewarding listen. And it begins with kind of a sleight of hand, almost like a faint. You hit play and you're like, wait, where am I? This is not what I was expecting. Crying innocent and tired but you should see the other guy.

8:28That's the opening track, the outside, and we are in the world of like Imogen Heap and vocoders. Yeah. Not a sound we've necessarily heard from Phoebe Bridgers before. No, I expect Phoebe Bridgers to be soft rubber bridge guitars with delicate synthesizers supporting her. And here she's become fully synthetic. The pairing of this opening lyric is also, I feel like captures what you were saying earlier where at first it feels like it's right from her moleskin.

8:59She's in a suit and tie. Right. Phoebe Bridgers is known for performing in a suit and tie. Especially with Boy Genius. Yeah, yeah. But you should see the other guy. It's such a funny lyric. It's like, sets up like there's some kind of battle. But then as it moves from the verse into the chorus, it's like the real voice of Phoebe Bridgers kind of emerges in this cool way. When I am on the outside

9:30When you hear her like quote unquote real voice come out of the fog of that vocoder and you can really almost see that image of her sort of watching herself. It's really powerful. And that almost becomes a theme through the album, this idea of like standing back and watching your life from a distance and trying to make sense of it in some way.

10:01I mean, it makes sense that she's doing so at this point. Obviously, her last set of albums were hugely successful. But when she put out her work with Boy Genius, her celebrity took off in a whole new way that I think was quite unexpected. Used to see Phoebe Bridgers walking around Los Angeles. Now she lives a life where, you know, if I just look at my students, so many of my students want to be Phoebe. They want to write music like Phoebe. She is such an aspirational figure at this point.

10:33And there's that thing when someone becomes very famous, their work has to change to meet that new found identity. And here we can see her looking at the character of Phoebe. And I think we're, throughout what I've heard of this album, constantly sort of navigating what's the real Phoebe versus what is the image of this idea of Phoebe Bridgers.

Lost Boys and Fame

10:57That tension bleeds into the second track on the album, Lost Boys, which actually begins with the tail end of that vocoder song before moving into a more acoustic world. Uh, the lost male characters in her life?

11:35I don't know. Well, perhaps, but, but I think it's a specific reference to the Lost Boys of Peter Pan, the Lost Boys of Neverland, you know, who literally never grow up. And we meet them in the chorus. Lost boys Never grow up Never go home Lost boys Never spend their lunch money Yeah, lost boys Yeah, lost boys Never grow up

12:06Okay. So, now things are making more sense to me. I did try to do a viewing of Peter Pan with my children a while back, only to realize that that film has not aged well, and I had to turn it off. Yes. And so, when I first heard Lost Boys, I was like, does Phoebe attract a lot of immature men in her life? Like, is that what's going on? And this makes a lot more sense where she is looking back on youth a time before fame and wealth and money

12:37were, you know, a part of her life and feeling nostalgic for that moment. Yeah, I mean, I think you could read it both ways, though. I feel like the production of this song, in contrast to what we heard before, has a very sort of upbeat, almost sort of celebratory nature to it. And when she performed this song on Jimmy Fallon, the performance starts with a close-up shot of just her face and then slowly zooms out to reveal that her entire backing band for the live performance

13:07is children. There's a really cool harmonic moment in this song as well. We get a really surprising chord at the end of the second chorus.

13:24Here we go.

13:31This moment where we modulate to a B-flat major chord in the key of D major, that's a very distant, foreign chord with this big swelling of all the brass instruments. To me, it's almost like that's the vision of Neverland that you get for a moment. And then it fades away to this very pedestrian image of lying in a twin bed. She really pays attention to making sure that the harmony

14:02matches the emotional sentiment of the music and oftentimes will use a chord change that only happens once to communicate something very specific.

Kill Me and Collaborators

14:11The song Kill Me walks this line between fantasy and reality in a really nimble way. This is gonna kill me Wait This is gonna kill me This chorus is another moment where it feels very organic

14:42the way she's just almost talking like this is gonna kill me Wait It sounds like something you would overhear someone saying in a conversation but then at the same time every time she sings Wait it's so calculated everything drops out for a minute and it's just the sound of her voice alone It's like very vulnerable and then all the instruments come back in Wait It's this balance

15:13of feeling very casual and off the cuff and also like perfectly orchestrated Two other significant moments from the song I want to call out One is the appearance of a character who will play a very central role in this album He has a whole song actually coming up later

15:43and it's Bo Burnham her current Bo Oh and actually one of the co-writers on a number of the tracks on Lost Weekend Bo Burnham former YouTube star turned comedian filmmaker made the great COVID comedy Doc Inside which featured the song That Funny Feeling

16:14That Funny Feeling Yeah which was later covered by Phoebe Bridgers one of the great covers of all time if you ask me So in addition to the first appearance of Bobby as I guess we'll call him we also get one of the classic Phoebe Bridgers moves it's something you can hear in some of her most popular songs like I Know The End The End is here The End is here

16:51Counterintuitively you save the biggest moment of the song for the very end and you ride it out into the sunset a similar version of this cathartic coda appears on Kill Me I think what the

17:26third act reveal accomplishes here and elsewhere in the Bridgers discography is it takes songs that might feel a little fragmented in some ways and turns them into something that packs like a bigger emotional punch and it's also like an element of surprise as well which is doubled in this particular case of Kill Me when she introduces this new voice into the mix it actually belongs

17:57to the lead singer of Geese Cameron Winter really he's credited on this album as son john johnson basically the entire internet has concluded that it's Cameron winter and he'll spoiler alert make another appearance later so add him to the mix of collaborators a lot of whom have been working with phoebe for a while we've got ethan gruska christian lee hudson

18:27orchestrations we got rob moose uh who was on the show jack antonoff is here as well but now we've got some new folks in addition cameron winter maya hawk shows up on some of the writing credits in this album so there's an interesting cast of characters here your favorite fall flavors are back at starbucks the one and only pumpkin spice latte and the deliciously smooth iced pecan crunch latte have arrived and are ready to sip all season

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The Governor's Waltz

20:41back to a song that i mentioned earlier with that unforgettable opening couplet about hiding in the bathroom like shelly duvall it's the governor's waltz there's a lot of moments in this record where there'll be a

21:12harmonic shift that will connect to something happening lyrically i think we get a nice one of these in uh the second chorus of governor's waltz let's see how long we can go without talking watch me pretending to sleep i'm next to you you're next to nothing you promised that you'd never leave but maybe oh yeah

21:44feels like a tim burton soundtrack totally so spooky i mean she loves ghosts and haunted things but what just occurred it does feel like a harmony borrowed from uh like a vincent price special or something let's hear that one more time and then we modulate to

22:16the parallel minor have this eerie vocal on top wow and it's a little bit haunted there are many ghosts looming over this record did you say haunted charlie what a perfect segue

Bluegrass Elements on Haunted

22:41because this is another track i wanted to talk about called haunted and i was thinking about you when i was listening to it charlie because it is the most blue grassy moment i think we've encountered from phoebe bridgers so far someone who definitely leans into a country americana sound at points but this is like full bluegrass we even have the members of nickel creek appearing here chris tealy sarah and sean

23:12watkins and phoebe's not like cosplaying it's it's like a really successful bluegrass adjacent track i mean she's bringing together all of her peers in the los angeles alt folk scene and so there is just a fluidity to these these people who are in her lives but also i think musically are really fitting at this sort of midpoint of the record where we've begun in that frozen vocoder we have moved through these cathartic codas

23:43with giant bands with you know often like with some synthesis in the background supporting it to get those big bombastic moments and then just stripping everything back a way of you know really feeling like phoebe has arrived i agree and i think we get some of the most exquisite turns of phrase in this song there's a difference

24:29between lying and deciding what not to say that's that's a really good line that's that's growing up you know that is that is maturation that is like oh yeah i can't always say it exactly as it is because i might hurt somebody but i also need to make sure to tell the truth yeah yeah and this is one of the songs on the the album that points towards some kind of healing or like self awareness or or hopefulness the the final chorus is very

25:00moving i think we've got lucy dacus and julian baker in

25:31there doing some harmonies with her maybe interesting they're on the credits oh yeah alex g is also on this album probably should mention that connor oberst gosh the uh classical voice arranger carolyn shaw oh yeah there's a sense of like putting all the pieces together in this really careful way like getting getting all the right sounds from all the right people to build the the tapestry of this

Title Track Lost Weekend

25:59album i feel like she does that on the album's title song lost weekend which begins very contemplative with a sort of eerie background reflective looking back

26:34at early part of her life when we get to the end there is a radical sonic transformation i can only pause it reflecting on maybe her own internal transformations you know that is charlie a third act reveal a cathartic coda it is it

27:04totally is and it's a very very moosey moment yeah i mean you've got the rob moose beautiful strings on top then you've got chris steely playing the mandolin in a way that reminds me of this uh this like 2000s indie group the books where you match up the sounds of acoustic instruments with the skittering electronics of like um almost like frou-frou the the image in he former project it is a i just never hear these kinds of organic electronic

27:35elements mash up in such a way in contrast to something which begins as like a solo contemplative uh you know organ and voice song there's one other sample that really took me by surprise here from the electronic composer paul lansky not just more idle chatter where he takes his wife's voice hannah mckay and he processes it in these really kind of skittering sped up ways wait where does that

28:13appear in the in the bridges song at the very end of lost weekend just for us just for like a second wow it's odd it's it's powerful and it's again a testament to like this idea of putting all these little pieces in their exact right place to make the whole that is more than the sum of its parts well which is you know when we think of phoebe bridges i at least think

28:44of someone who is like solo acoustic guitar on a stage as she basically performed at madison square garden with uh you know two musicians supporting her but it's like i she gets sort of put in the like singer songwriter sort of place and yet there's always been this supporting orchestration of samples and synthesizers and sometimes banjos and strings these records feel so cinematic and there's something very tasteful about how she does it though because her voice the song is

29:15always front and center the cinematics are are there to support the underlying meaning of the work they're never the thing which sort of takes center stage except at these very particular moments yeah there's a lot of craft at work if we go back to haunted for a moment there's one other thing i wanted to say about it i actually called it like a chorus at one point when i when we were listening to a clip but it's a funny song

Never Going Back

29:41because it doesn't really

Never Going Back

29:42have a chorus it doesn't have any lyrics that really repeat throughout it uh it constantly is giving you uh the same melody but with constantly changing lyrics yeah and i feel like the mirror to that song or the inverse of that song is never going back which is the exact opposite if haunted is constantly generating new lyrics never going back is just repeating the same lyrical phrase over

30:14and over again whole song just continues like that never going back again the way it used to be is not the way that it is except for the voice note that we get

30:44from her father she's obviously confronting the nature of time is marching forward that we grief is happening it's performed in this very live sort of way this mantra singing over and over again but we hear it as if she's singing far away from the microphone standing at the back of the studio it feels like a almost like a verite moment just like something captured that she was just happened to be singing yeah i agree this is like the most journalistic moment in some ways of the

31:16whole album and then as you mentioned it has a artifact from the singer's actual life this voicemail from her father since this figure of her father has like played such a role throughout her musical career it's very kind of arresting when you hear that and like i said it does feel like the most torn from

31:48the journal moment in this whole album in in some ways and to me those two tracks haunted and never going back are are really the two extremes of like how you might approach writing one is very haunted is very lyrically kind of playful and and verbose and and tongue-in-cheek and never going back it's just very like

32:19straightforward and just unadorned in this way and and repetitive so it's like these two extremes of how someone can write a song basically once again someone who presents as here i am standing on a stage with my guitar and and yet there's a lot of craft and thought about the different ways that a song can present itself let's do one more and to be clear we're not going to talk about every song on this album we're not going to talk about the banger that is bobby the mysterious panorama

32:50the shout out to the dying malls of america liberty tree and a few other

I Can't Wait and Jekyll and Hyde

32:57wonderful tracks here but let's end with i can't wait which is another exploration of themes of like horror and fear but also gives us a final cathartic coda that sums up a lot of the themes of the album okay before we get to the cathartic coda

33:38yeah those lines feel like they're an answer to what we heard at the very beginning of the album you know what is she saying i'm outside watching there the sense of like distance from yourself yeah now it's feels like towards the end of the album she's more comfortable being in her own skin in this way yeah i'm not good but i'm better miss my cue but whatever it's now or never psyching herself up to be who she is and let people take that however they will it's

34:09a little bit of a magic trick like oh i miss my cue whatever yeah i'm just like i'm just doing this thing the band's playing in the background i happen to be singing you know and then the return of cameron winter side by side hi jekyll hyde finally together that's that's powerful and and it's

34:42another moment where the music mirrors the lyrics in this way because their two voices couldn't be more different like yeah phoebe bridger's kind of high timorous angelic cameron winter like kind of low vibrato kind of rough yeah they're literally jekyll and hyde like vocally yeah but they're also singing these perfect harmonies and mirroring this idea of jekyll and hyde finally together like embracing all

35:13of who you are as one it's such a powerful moment there's so many contrasts on this album you know those contrasting lyrics of things that are beautiful and things that are profane next to each other yeah the idea of straight from the journal and extremely crafted and thoughtful and the merging of voices and both uh you know literal but also internal coming together in a really stunning way yeah i told you i wasn't ready for this like i i might i might cry yeah no it's it's very profound

35:44it's it's emotional that's good charlie it's good it's good that you're in touch with your emotions you know you should go do what's that right in your journal you're right maybe it's time get that moleskin out and i thought i would end this episode uh by reading uh the rest of this uh journal so uh sit down and get comfortable here we go december 13th my last night news no i'm kidding uh instead we'll roll credits but uh but yeah maybe maybe

36:14in addition to to the takeaway of of all the the highs and lows and jekylls and hides in this album maybe it's maybe it's time to put down the phone and and pick up a journal fall is here and that means the pumpkin spice latte is back at

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