On Repeat: Phoebe Bridgers' I Know The End Stares 2020 In The Eyes
Tristan Young @talltristan
If you’ve been noticing an inordinate number of hipsters sporting skeleton shirts, you can thank Phoebe Bridgers and her new album, Punisher, for that. In addition to being one of the best written albums of the year, the new release from the alt folk indie pock rock savant sports some seriously on point-for-2020 branding; it’s put to pretty great use in the clip for Kyoto, which is so far the best music video of the year. From a non-visual stand point, the final cut, ominously titled I Know The End has so much going on. It begins as a yearning and slightly trembling folk ballad. Bridgers does her best to romanticize a life on the road, and then one in in pastoral, domestic bliss. In both scenarios something is wrong, something is missing. You can sense her commitment to these narratives that she dearly wishes to be part of wavering, so she shifts gears. With a bolder sense of purpose and melody the track slowly morphs into wildly creative and even cataclysmic territory. In astounding post modern literature Bridgers begins to document her current relationships with nearly every aspect of her life: with her family, her friends, her country, her religion, her culture, her future.
“Windows down, scream along, to some America first rap country song/ a slaughterhouse, an outlet mall, slot machines, fear of god”.
None of these relationships are expressed in the terms we think they should be, not in a traditional sense. Everything is slightly eschewed. Yet Bridgers is strikingly confident in the make up of these jarringly modern variants. As 2020 continues to redefine nearly every aspect of our lives, Bridgers is pioneering and inspiring in her embrace of disruption, calmly pacing through all of it with a sense of finality that metastasizes in the best ending of a song this year. Deathly dramatic horns begin to blare, drowning out delirious guitar screeches but not Bridgers’ own, frankly terrifying and apocalyptic howl. With an end so vividly and ferociously conclusive, perhaps what proceeds it doesn’t matter as much, so long as you accept in any form it takes. If her lyrics can’t convince of that, her final scream will. Just wait till the end.