“Baby, if you leave me, can you take me with you?/I can sit in the back seat.” That’s what passes for a joke on Lost Weekend. In its dramatic plotting, Phoebe Bridgers’ first album in six years, which is out today, parallels the latest by Olivia Rodrigo—one of Bridgers’ many understudies, to be sure. Just take out all the good times. “I Can’t Wait” is a mini-laser light opera in the album’s dolorous back half. A foamy crest of flyover synth-rock ebbs suddenly at the 1:30 mark, unearthing a campfire singalong accompanied by the strains of Chris Thile’s mandolin. The atmosphere is so totalizing that you can close your eyes and see Jack Antonoff perched on a log, harping on his harmonica, face framed by sparks.
And there, lurking beside him in the shadows, is that…Son-Jon Johnson? Sorry, I mean Ameron-cay Inter-way, whose choice of pseudonym here seems less an attempt to preserve any meaningful anonymity than a wink and nod towards his forebears, those puckish folkies of the ’60s and ’70s. Besides, there’s no mistaking him. Winter and Bridgers’ voices don’t really blend—his tone is too warbly, her timbre too wispy—but, god, if that lower-third harmony on the line “Hyde Jekyll Hyde” doesn’t make for the most beautiful three words I’ve heard sung this year. Two great and lonely songwriters meet on the threshold of revelation. Who is the angel and who is the one in need of saving? No matter: They can keep each other company at the end of the road.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
