The Daily Spin, October 31
Phoebe Bridgers | Punisher
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite songs from each album right here.
Album: Punisher (2020)
Artist: Phoebe Bridgers
Link:
For a long time, I was a little skeptical of Phoebe Bridgers - not in that I felt she was fake, that much was clearly not the case, but I didn’t quite get the hype. I enjoyed ‘Motion Sickness’ and ‘Smoke Signals’ off of her debut album, 2017’s Stranger in the Alps, but the sustained product wasn’t really something that called to me, despite the evident talent.
Punisher, however, made it crystal-clear. From the very beginning of ‘DVD Menu’ through to the last desperate screams on ‘I Know The End’, this is a record multidimensional in approach, candid and heartfelt and gorgeous all at once in a whirlwind rush of emotion and sentiment.
Bridgers maintains a lot of similar stylistic choices as were on Stranger, keeping with a very comfortable attitude towards heavier topics - though she moves towards multidimensional avenues throughout the album, this commitment to emotional devastation never wavers, and strikes true for me more often than not.
I think that’s what sets Punisher apart, at its heart, from a lot of music made by similar creators - Bridgers can evoke such strong rushes of emotion through tracks like ‘Moon Song’ or ‘ICU’ - it’s an album that seems devoted to the relationships we foster, but additionally the relationships that we foster to music and the strength those bonds can lend us. Bridgers is ultimately comfortable and confident in her ability to bend sound to her stories, and through that music her tales become more cohesive and stronger for it. It’s a symbiotic relationship anyone would be jealous of, especially as the backbone of an album so fucking good.
Rating: 9.6/10
Best Tracks: I Know The End; Moon Song; Kyoto; ICU
Worst Tracks: Graceland Too