Towards the end of Phoebe Bridgers’ new track, “Garden Song,” she captures her songwriting prowess in just two lines: “Everything’s growing in our garden/You don’t have to know that it’s haunted.” Since her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps, Bridgers has garnered fans by skillfully blending beauty with darkness, and on “Garden Song,” her first new solo material since Alps, she nails it.
The track rides along a wave of shimmery synths by Ethan Gruska, Bridgers’ co-producer. Using the delicate, crushing vocals that are her trademark, she describes a scene from a fairytale, one that includes a house resting on a hill with thousands of roses (and probably a few ghosts). It’s a future she longs for, where she’ll detach herself from her cell phone and “see” her life. “The doctor put her hands over my liver,” she announces over subtle guitar. “She told me my resentment’s getting smaller.”
Bridgers has spent the last three years on the road, releasing records with Conor Oberst as Better Oblivion Community Center and with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker as Boygenius. Instead of hiding her talent, these collaborations have allowed her to hone in on her introspective songwriting even more, and “Garden Song” is only the beginning of all she’s learned.
In typical Bridgers fashion, the singer has also released a video that sits in stark contrast to the song’s melancholy: She’s simply kicking back in her bedroom, ripping on a bong and hanging out with fuzzy creatures. Even when the future may look bleak, she’s still a good hang.
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