release date: Jun. 18, 2020
format: digital (11 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,80]
producer: Tony Berg, Ethan Gruska, Phoebe Bridgers
label: Dead Oceans - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 2. "Garden Song" - 3. "Kyoto" - 4. "Punisher" - 5. "Halloween" - 6. "Chinese Satellite" - 9. "ICU" - 10. "Graceland Too" - 11. "I Know the End"
2nd studio album by Phoebe Bridgers following her acclaimed debut Stranger in the Alps (Sep. 2017).
Where the melancholy glue of acoustic folk on the debut probably reminded many about the long list of folk artists, Punisher adds layers to that artistry. Some songs are like extended threads to the 2017 album, but since then she has worked with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker on their side-project Boygenius, and she has collborated with Conor Oberst on Better Oblivion Community Center, and those projects now have coloured this new collection of songs in a most positive way - making it a coherent whole but also by widenening the musical universe of Phoebe Bridgers.
Bridgers still narrates with the colour blue as main ingredient but her music invites other colours in, which makes it more alive and powerful.
Highly recommended.
[ Rolling Stone, đThe Guardian, Slant 4 / 5, Pitchfork 8,7 / 10, allmusic.com 4,5 / 5, NME, 5 / 5 stars ]
