Today marks the fifth anniversary of Bridger’s debut LP.

8.0

GENRE: Indie Rock/Pop
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2017

From the album cover to the music itself, there is a certain level of eeriness to Phoebe Bridgers’ debut full-length, Strange in the Alps. To record the vocals for the album, Bridgers shut all the studio lights off and sang in the dark. “When you can see everyone looking at you, it’s a different experience than singing for yourself,” she later declared. Between songs that recount her relationship with an older, abusive man and how the then-recent death of her icons impacted her mental health, it’s easy to understand Bridgers’ motivations for not wanting to look at anyone while singing. This sentiment is pertinent to all the tracks on Strange in the Alps, an album with forlorn lyrics sweetened by the lightness of her croonings. But even within the LP’s somber and melancholic atmosphere, you can still see flecks of light here and there, Brigers’ sense of humor flashing through her confessional verses and cultural references over folk and indie-rock arrangements.

The anger and ferocity in much of the songwriting on Stranger in the Alps arrive transformed, alchemized into calm by Brigers’ sweet delivery. The album pieces together fragments of her life as a then-upcoming singer in the LA scene, someone who gave different paths a chance until eventually finding the right one—before betting on a solo career, she had been part of indie bands Einstein’s Dirty Secret and Sloppy Jane. Simultaneously, many of the songs on Stranger in the Alps are about knowingly being in love with the wrong person and remaining in those damned relationships for some reason or another. These contemplations are put into perspective through a very morbid lens—every single song on the album has the word death or words related to it. This grim atmosphere suggests Bridgers in a dark bedroom with only a guitar, insomnia, and thoughts for company, looking at her deserted street through the window in the wee hours.

Throughout the record, Bridgers is so committed to singing her truth that she’s not afraid of potentially saying too much. Her lyrics are extremely autobiographical and personal, to the point where one feels like invading her intimacy at times. On “Motion Sickness,” which is, perplexingly, the most upbeat and uptempo song on the record, she details a relationship with an older man from the music industry who played with her feelings and suggested he would propel her career. “I hate you for what you did/And I miss you like a little kid,” Phoebe states her conflicting feelings for this guy, who she later revealed to be Ryan Adams. In 2019, Bridgers and other female artists accused Adams of sexual and emotional abuse in a New York Times article. “You said when you met me, you were bored/And you, you were in a band when I was born,” she sings in the bridge over a haze of slightly distorted guitars and shimmering violins.

No one can deny: Bridgers is one of the bluntest songwriters out there. On “Scott Street,” she captures the awkwardness of running into an ex in a conversation filled with “how’s been” questions and humorous, cut-to-the-chase answers. “Anyway, don’t be a stranger,” she ends the track with pretended aloofness. In an interview, later on, she confessed that the song was about Marshal Vore, who remains her drummer and friend. Vore co-wrote “Smoke Signals,” which Bridgers has said is also about him. On “Funeral,” she sings candidly about the death of a friend around her age, and on “Demi Moore,” she asks to be sent nudes. Though the subject matter of some of these songs seems abysmally distant, they all illustrate Bridgers’ knack for delivering highly sensitive lyrics without blushing or dropping into a defensive crouch—something that positioned her alongside trobairitz like Lana Del Rey and Julia Jacklin.

The emotive landscape of the record is also home to an injection of intelligent cultural references. On the opener “Smoke Signals,” Bridgers sings about a disconnected relationship while declaring the impact of the deaths of idols David Bowie and Motörhead’s Lemmy on her. On “Demi Moore,” she accepts sadness and then rejects it with a playful homophone: “I don’t wanna be stoned anymore,” she sings in a line that, if read fastly, sounds like the actress’s name. Eighth track “Chelsea” was inspired by the killing of Nancy Spungen, who is believed to have been stabbed to death by then-boyfriend Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. She stitches these allusions with endless double entendrés and metaphors: “Helicóptero over my head every night when I go to bed,” suggesting loud thoughts and anxiety on “Scott Street;” “He never lies or picks up his phone,” hitting at a lover who never lies because he never talks to her or a lover that never looks at his phone when he’s with her on “Georgia,” “I laid awake as someone shoved you up against a wall/Quarantined in a bad dream,” painting her relationship with her brother on “Would You Rather.”

The last third of the record amounts to similar songs in chord progression and structure, probably due to the lack of drums. But this slower back-end contributes to the motif of Stranger in the Alps: melodically beautiful, lyrically poetical, thematically macabre. Throughout the whole record, Bridgers plunges into her psyche with terrorizing calm. She even hypothesizes her own passing on “Killer” in an attempt to cope with her fear of abandonment (“When a machine keeps me alive/And I’m losing all my hair/I hope you kiss my rotten head”). Even though the record is heavily ghoulish, you come out of Strangers in the Alps with the sense that Bridgers found the cure she was looking for when writing these songs. Perhaps because of her voice, always uncracked in live performances. Perhaps, because it’s our common knowledge that there’s success in singing your sorrows away. Either way, Bridgers has made an incredible career for herself, and Stranger in the Alps stands as a stunning, solid debut to this day. I guess it’s safe to say that she’s okay.

Listen to Stranger in the Alps: