2020 - USA
Singer-Songwriter, Indie Folk, Indie Rock
Second album by the Californian artist born in 1994, Punisher confirms the talent of a singer-songwriter deploying all of her adolescent spleen and her immoderate elation. On one hand, minimalist ballads alongside with Phoebe’s voice whispering to our ears her perpetual run away from moroseness. On the other, guitars bursting in to immerse us inside of her daily thoughts. Its’ only been two years since this album was released and it already feels like the album of a generation. When I first heard, Punisher left me with a bland feeling, then I went back to it, and each time the album grew on me. One day I saw the CD in a store and decided to buy it because I felt something big could happen to me. When I read the booklet, I notice drawnings that looked vaguely familiar. Those drawnings were made by Chris Riddell who also illustrated the book series The Edge Chronicles. I stil have those books in my bedroom. Now Punisher is among my favourite album of all time, because it reunites every year of my life into one, bringing every people I’ve been together. By revealing her intimacy to us, Phoebe Bridgers breaks down
our silences and magnifies our smallest dreams.
Don’t mistaken when hearing the instrumental opening DVD Menu only lasting a minute, this song is as important as the others. It single-handedly set up a link with her previous debut album Stranger in the Alps, deforming the original singing of the closing track You Missed My Heart to create a new frightening atmosphere. Phoebe said she was inspired by Grouper to compose this song, and indeed we can feel their heavy ambient sound. DVD Menu, as its title says it, introduces us to the colours we’re about to hear all along the album. We’ve been warned, something’s about to happen. Without delay, Garden Song tells us the story of her awakening, that inevitable passing point when we become aware, too much aware, of the world surrounding us, and even worse, of ourselves. It’s our entrance into adulthood where great doubts live with painful healings. It’s time we grieve the end of our days, our garden is already full of memories, decisive moments, traumas and many other flowers defining a part of who we’re going to be as an individual.
By exploring her love and hate relationship to her father in Kyoto, the direction Phoebe Bridgers takes in this album is one of recovery, of winning back. She’s looking for a body and mind independence in the midst of a swamp made of past miasma and her own toxic psychology. Phoebe indeed remembers losing herself in a band love relationship in Halloween, and recalls when she used to forget herself in order to help others in ICU and Savior Complex, always in the line of her idols, Elliott Smith and John Lennon. Faith, self-destruction, her legitimacy as an artist, Phoebe Bridgers analyzes all of her anxieties and concerns with her subtle poetry on Punisher, Moon Song and Chinese Satellite, demonstarting us she’s one of the most impressive singer-songwriter of her generation. So when the last song kicks in, we’re already in awe. On I Know the End, Phoebe takes us into an apocalyptic tornado, exhorting her audience to accept the fatality of mortality in order to embrace the torments and exultations of existence. Moreover, she tells us about the necessity to shape our personality as individuals in safe places, far away from traumas and daily micro-aggressions , to have our own secret kingdom, whether it’s a bedroom, a film, a phone or a song, in order to apprehend our relationship to the world and people with more lightness, confidence, self-care and self-assurance.
By deconstructing her life story, Phoebe Bridgers writes an odyssey about how we benefit from our love for the others and our fascination for the world as we fantasize it. Between bittersweet irony and cathartic instrumentation, Phoebe devote herself to rethink an old mythology (road trips, religions, aliens and all those attempts to escape by looking away from the painful questions living in our mortal minds) in order to build a new one, a mythology for today, focused on the relationships she builds with those living and dying by her side. On this 40-minute journey, she manages to dream the edge of the world, while keeping in mind nothing awaits her on this imaginary part of the world. Just like me, she might have closed the last book from The Edges Chronicles series and put it back in her library, going back to her routine. In the end, Punisher redefines mankind at the scale of the individual, of his mental health, of his troubled feelings. In other words, Punisher opens the doors of the 21st century.
our silences and magnifies our smallest dreams.
Don’t mistaken when hearing the instrumental opening DVD Menu only lasting a minute, this song is as important as the others. It single-handedly set up a link with her previous debut album Stranger in the Alps, deforming the original singing of the closing track You Missed My Heart to create a new frightening atmosphere. Phoebe said she was inspired by Grouper to compose this song, and indeed we can feel their heavy ambient sound. DVD Menu, as its title says it, introduces us to the colours we’re about to hear all along the album. We’ve been warned, something’s about to happen. Without delay, Garden Song tells us the story of her awakening, that inevitable passing point when we become aware, too much aware, of the world surrounding us, and even worse, of ourselves. It’s our entrance into adulthood where great doubts live with painful healings. It’s time we grieve the end of our days, our garden is already full of memories, decisive moments, traumas and many other flowers defining a part of who we’re going to be as an individual.
By exploring her love and hate relationship to her father in Kyoto, the direction Phoebe Bridgers takes in this album is one of recovery, of winning back. She’s looking for a body and mind independence in the midst of a swamp made of past miasma and her own toxic psychology. Phoebe indeed remembers losing herself in a band love relationship in Halloween, and recalls when she used to forget herself in order to help others in ICU and Savior Complex, always in the line of her idols, Elliott Smith and John Lennon. Faith, self-destruction, her legitimacy as an artist, Phoebe Bridgers analyzes all of her anxieties and concerns with her subtle poetry on Punisher, Moon Song and Chinese Satellite, demonstarting us she’s one of the most impressive singer-songwriter of her generation. So when the last song kicks in, we’re already in awe. On I Know the End, Phoebe takes us into an apocalyptic tornado, exhorting her audience to accept the fatality of mortality in order to embrace the torments and exultations of existence. Moreover, she tells us about the necessity to shape our personality as individuals in safe places, far away from traumas and daily micro-aggressions , to have our own secret kingdom, whether it’s a bedroom, a film, a phone or a song, in order to apprehend our relationship to the world and people with more lightness, confidence, self-care and self-assurance.
By deconstructing her life story, Phoebe Bridgers writes an odyssey about how we benefit from our love for the others and our fascination for the world as we fantasize it. Between bittersweet irony and cathartic instrumentation, Phoebe devote herself to rethink an old mythology (road trips, religions, aliens and all those attempts to escape by looking away from the painful questions living in our mortal minds) in order to build a new one, a mythology for today, focused on the relationships she builds with those living and dying by her side. On this 40-minute journey, she manages to dream the edge of the world, while keeping in mind nothing awaits her on this imaginary part of the world. Just like me, she might have closed the last book from The Edges Chronicles series and put it back in her library, going back to her routine. In the end, Punisher redefines mankind at the scale of the individual, of his mental health, of his troubled feelings. In other words, Punisher opens the doors of the 21st century.