Phoebe Bridgers

Punisher

The album is fantastic and I can’t recommend listening to it enough. Punisher combines the sound of indie rock with thoughtful lyricism and a tremendous amount of ambitious songwriting, even in its more peaceful moments.

At 25, Phoebe Bridgers is, by all metrics, an artist at the beginning of her career, though Punisher sounds more like the work of a time-tested veteran perfecting a style she's been honing for years.

Her sophomore album Punisher cements what may be Bridgers’ most understated gift of all: her seemingly innate ability to capture the mundanity of modern sadness in song.

Punisher is a powerful work of catharsis, a reminder that ending toxic relationships is equally as painful as it is necessary. Bridgers has an incredible ability to construct grand, poetic metaphors, while simultaneously grounding each song in incredibly specific scenes and moments.

The main difference between Stranger in the Alps and Punisher is simply maturation of her writing, which might well have come from working with so many talented songwriters in the last couple of years – but you would never mistake one of Bridgers’ songs for anyone else’s.

Creating a record that builds on her reputation as the best songwriter on the block while acknowledging the humorous and also political bent of her media presence, Punisher is a triumph in understanding and toying with expectations.

The emotional clarity of Phoebe Bridgers’ debut Stranger in the Alps was as striking as a kick in the shins. On Punisher, that clarity is hidden behind a smokescreen of uncertainties.

Bridgers’s second album under her own name, Punisher moves forward confidently from her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps.

The emotional potency of Punisher is undeniable.

‘Punisher’ is an immense album tackling the ugly and absurd sides to life with beauty, humour and self-awareness. It’s a unique reporting style and a key statement.

The end of the world is a central detail on Punisher, an influence over the uncertainty that falls over these dark but gorgeous songs.

Eleven expertly rendered, largely downcast songs about broken faith, desperate, occasionally self-destructive love, and tenuous recovery.

Bridgers gives you the moon on Punisher. Which is to say that she gives you everything that you are looking for in a Phoebe Bridgers album but still manages to make it feel miraculous and larger than life.

Reteaming with co-producers Ethan Gruska and Tony Berg, Bridgers pulls the listener into a weary world only she could master. It’s exhaustive but redemptive, and she casts her songwriting into fire and brimstone, only to later yank it free in the knick of time.

Punisher is that rarest of beasts. A record that grows with each listen, that takes it’s time for its stories to unravel, and that wears its love of literature on its sleeve as comfortably as it does its love of music.

Punisher has more than its fair share of transcendent moments.

This is an awkward record in places, but then, so is Bridgers; her sheer force of personality remains her greatest asset, and it’s more than enough to carry Punisher over the line.

Over the past few years, it may have seemed like Bridgers was a team player, but on Punisher, she reannounces herself as a solo songwriter reaching her peak.

The disc nails certain facets of her experience with its open and careful language, and that singular, unending pursuit keeps the album focused.