Phoebe Bridgers’s 2017 project Stranger in the Alps is a heartbreaking, sentimental collection of songs. Ranging from everything from breakups to grief to murder ballads, this album features every flavor of melancholy.
Phoebe’s tender voice floats over instrumentation featuring somber piano and acoustic guitar. Every song on this album is solid, it’s definitely no skips for me. Each song remains unique sonically despite their shared themes and tone. “Motion Sickness” is an upbeat track about the end of a tumultuous, unhappy relationship. The song touches on the funnier parts of a breakup and realizing just how bad the other person was for you. This track is quite different from “Scott Street”, a song about the same breakup which gracefully narrates an imagined conversation between the two parties after a long time apart. The song’s outro is legendary and includes everything from train whistles to a wistful string orchestra to a bike bell.
The lyrics are stunning and incredibly honest. Some of the most poignant lines come from “Killer”, where Bridgers contemplates her capacity for violence. In the second verse, she sings about how she imagines the end of her life if she were on life support, “I hope you kiss my rotten head and pull the plug/ know that I’ve burned every playlist/ and I’ve given all my love”.
Some standouts for me are “Smoke Signals”, “Killer”, and “Scott Street”, but it’s hard to pick a favorite from an album like this. The album also features a deeply emotional cover of Mark Kozelek’s “You Missed My Heart” that is particularly lovely.