Phoebe Bridgers Sings about Love and Death and the Whole Damn Thing in ‘Lost Weekend,’ a Captivating Record Worth the Six-Year Wait: Album Review

The singer's first solo album since 2020's 'Punisher' is out this Friday.

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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If there’s anything Phoebe Bridgers knows how to do, it’s land a punch line. There are a lot of them in “Lost Weekend,” her first solo record in six years, and she doesn’t waste any time in getting to the first of the album’s many great jokes. Possibly the most quotable couplet comes right in the opening lines of the opening number, “The Outside,” which has Bridgers wryly and ruefully singing through a vocoder that she is “crying in a suit and tie / But you should see the other guy.” Quickly it becomes apparent the “other guy” is her late father, laid out in his coffin. If that cold open leaves you unsure whether to LOL or brace for tears, welcome to the world of “Lost Weekend,” where a little bit of gallows humor is never far off, and neither are surprising heaps of heart-on-sleeve emotion.

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