Phoebe Bridgers by Frank Ockenfels
Phoebe Bridgers was back in her skeleton suit for a performance of Kyoto as part of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’s ongoing, socially distanced #PlayAtHome series.
The track features on Bridgers’ recent album Punisher, which Live4ever awarded a 7.5/10 after declaring that it is, ‘not the only unexpected item in an emotional baggage area heard this year, but stands up to be counted proudly’:
“One of its defining qualities is a messiness, a blurring or lack of precision that often means you’re hearing these songs through a fog. The title-track has this unpolished vulnerability, one shared on the distorted Chinese Satellite, the thrashing drums intruding like the mischievous work of a blinded neighbour.”
“These playful and incongruous passages give some light, but they can’t always distract from a raft of plangent lyrics, as on Moon Song’s aching, slow burn dissolution; ‘But you’re holding me like water in your hands/When you saw the dead little bird/You started crying’.”