leave it to phoebe to make falling in love sound melancholic. while her long awaited third album still has the classic notes of desiderium, wistfulness, and the deep ache of melancholy that never really goes away; you can hear hints of her boygenius era slip through some of the songs. especially on the song haunted. depressing lyrics with an upbeat track? classic boygenius. “if you’re gonna make wish then you better be specific, you’re gonna have to live it everyday” thanks phoebe, i wasn’t really hungry anyways. the album is also a lot more grown up compared to her previous work, but that’s also because she’s grown up. if you’ve followed her work since the beginning, then you’ll know about the complex relationship she had with her father up until he passed away last year (?); and you can kind of see her go though the different stages of grief through her work. in punisher, her song kyoto is about her strained and complex relationship with her dad who was an alcoholic. she talks about the anger she has towards him but also the empathy: “you called me from a pay phone, they still got pay phones, it cost a dollar minute, to tell me you’re getting sober, you wrote me a letter but i don’t have to read it” “i’m going to kill you if you don’t beat me to it” “he said you called on his birthday, you were off by like 10 days, but you get a few points for trying” then we see the transition to acceptance in lost weekend. she realizes that grief is complex and you can simultaneously hate someone for what they did but also still have a soft spot for the person that they were. we see that in her songs standing still, lost weekend (reprise), most notably never going back! where she adds a voicemail he left: standing still: “feeling indifferent, wearing black. sometimes i want you back, but not today” “i found her bleeding over the sink, but when you said sorry you were looking at me” “i wasn’t too young to understand, i just didn’t think it was so bad” “i can’t imagine you dead, but you are everyday. thank you for everything” lost weekend (reprise): “i still live by the things he taught me. like how to forgive when they’re not sorry” “i am my old mans oldest son. i fought the wall and the wall won” i think this is one of her strongest albums yet.
