Photo of Phoebe Bridgers by Olof Grind
Running a little behind in posting this, but with good reason: this weekend was the 48 Hour Film Project, where teams of filmmakers get assigned a genre on Friday night along with a character, prop, and line of dialogue that you have to work into your entry somewhere, and you write it, film it, and turn it in by Sunday night. We pulled sci-fi out of the hat and I had the idea we ended up going with, which unfortunately meant I also had to spend all of Friday night (and the wee hours of Saturday morning) writing the script, then all day Saturday acting in it. So even though I had this entire column written by Friday afternoon but it took until Sunday to have a spare moment to post this.
Anyway! I promised last week to dig into the Strokes as well as August 7 releases like Margaret Glaspy, but I called an audible and instead just dove right into the August 14 releases, most notably of course being the new Phoebe Bridgers, which had me, a 47-year-old dude, acting like this…
…but first, a couple last stragglers from July, including an impressive debut from a couple weeks back by a former member of Modest Mouse that is the one release this week that really grabbed my attention. Let’s dive in, shall we?
Lisa Molinaro, Blind Trust (self-released): Lisa Molinaro’s debut solo album has been a long time coming. The classically trained violist’s music career started way back in 2004 as one half of the avant garde instrumental duo Talkdemonic, followed by stints as touring violist/multi-instrumentalist for The National and the Decemberists and a gig as a full-time member of Modest Mouse, appearing on 2015’s Strangers to Ourselves and 2021’s The Golden Casket.
The experience has done Molinaro well: this is a confident, wide-ranging debut. There’s far too much variety here for a simple “this sounds like so-and-so” sort of comparison, though I can say in her vocals that I hear little echoes throughout of Kate Bush and (especially) Tori Amos, while the songs often have the warm pulse of The National in the way they bubble and swell and crescendo. It’s the kind of album where the gentle lullaby-like “Over the Moon” bumps up against the scuzzy alt-rock guitars of “Peach Fuzz” and the eerie calm and pizzicato plucks of “Ever Slow” and it somehow all works as a piece. Favorite songs: “Not So Secret Codes,” “We All Get Stuck,” “The Ending Never Stops.” Will I Listen Again?: Definitely.
Nicholas Payton & Butcher Brown, A Supreme Blue (Concord Jazz): Storied trumpeter/pianist Nicholas Payton teams up with Butcher Brown (which is a quintet, not a single person) to pay tribute to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Now, you might think that any musician trying to recreate the two most famous and influential jazz albums by the two most famous and influential jazz musicians of all time is the height of hubris, but thankfully, Payton and Co. treat these venerated originals as jumping off points rather than just dutifully recreating them. The Kind of Blue tracks in particular are faster, bluesier, and more willing to wander away from the original template (whereas the inimitable four-note central motif on the A Love Supreme ones is kind of hard to avoid, or ignore). It never approaches the transcendence of the originals (how could it?) but it’s mostly a pretty pleasant listen, with the noted exception of the final track, which turns Coltrane’s portentous finale “Psalm” into a plush, dated slow-jam complete with vocodered vocals that, at 11 torturous minutes, I found a little hard to get through.
I’m still not sure that this album was necessary, but the conceit got me, far from a jazz connoisseur, to listen to a new jazz album for the first time in I don’t even know how many years, so mission accomplished? Will I Listen Again?: Probably not—if I want to hear these songs again, I’ll probably just listen to the originals, but that says more about my general jazz listening habits than anything else.
Yard Act, You’re Gonna Need a Little Music (Island): Take the Britpop shrug of Blur, add the dance-y strut of Franz Ferdinand, and give the vocals the snark of an MTV interview with the Gallagher brothers circa 1996, and you’ll get Yard Act, a quartet from Leeds who described themselves perfectly on a 2024 single: “We make hits/ Two broke millennial men/ And we’d do it again every night on the back of the bus/ You know there ain’t no fuss.” While nothing on this, their third album, hits quite as hard as that song (one of my favorites tunes of the last few years), it’s very much of a piece, full of suave, sweaty, strutting post-Britpop that even goes full Italo-disco on the title track. It’s also very much a good time. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Phoebe Bridgers, Lost Weekend (Dead Oceans): Considering my tastes as well-documented in this column (mostly indie rock, heavily leaning toward women singer-songwriters these days), I must admit something that might be surprising: despite the glowing reviews by writers named Mike who contribute to this website and despite loving Boygenius’ the record myself, I had never heard a Phoebe Bridgers solo album in its entirety before today. So if you want the expert’s opinion, you’re probably better off checking in at Pitchfork or Stereogum or Paste. But for what it’s worth, here’s a neophyte/casual fan’s opinion.
I was a little surprised by the sedate pace and heavily vocodered vocals on opening track “The Outside”; for a hot second, I thought maybe I had put on Jena Malone’s amazing Flowers for Men (I do that a lot, it’s one of my favorite albums of the year so far). But the rollicking “Lost Boys” immediately won me over, a strummy, catchy song with the kind of uplift that made that Boygenius record so appealing. (It also features her Boygenius cohorts Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker on backing vocals, so there is that.) Jack Antonoff is credited as a producer on every track of the album, though that really only comes through on “Bobby,” which features that kind of organic-yet-also-synthy, uplifting-yet-sad sound he’s so good at nailing. “Haunted” has a nice campfire jingle to it, amplified by the backing acoustic guitar, violin, and mandolin from the members of Nickel Creek. The under-two-minute interlude “Never Going Back!” has a similar vibe, but with the added emotional gut punch of a sample of a voicemail from Bridgers’ deceased father. And “Liberty Tree” kind of splits the difference between Antonoff-y and campfire-y, supplying an injection of energy to the album’s back half.
Much of the rest of the album, though, moves at a sedate pace, mostly just Bridgers quiet, quivering voice and the barest of atmospheric backing. Here, I feel the lyrics do much of the heavy lifting, and do well in this regard: Bridgers’ lyrics thread the needle between feeling specific and personal yet also universal, lines that feel literal and clear in the moment yet somehow seem ephemeral and cryptic when read. If you follow Bridgers’ personal life, you’ll find allusions to her father’s death and her broken engagement with actor Paul Mescal (and even a subtle dig at his Mescal’s girlfriend, Gracie Abrams, on “Governor’s Waltz”), but that knowledge is not required to appreciate the songs on their base ability to speak to the human condition.
On balance, this album is a bit of a tough nut to crack after just two spins, with only “Lost Boys,” “Haunted,” and “Liberty Tree” sending me sprinting for the repeat button, but the emotional puzzle and general instrumental beauty of the other tracks leave me intrigued enough to certainly warrant further listening. I can’t speak to where it lands in her discography, but judged as a standalone, it’s an intriguing listen worthy of further exploration. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Hovvdy, Big World (Arts & Crafts): Will Taylor and Charlie Martin started Hovvdy in Austin, Texas, in the mid-2010s, tried a few years of long distance collaboration during the pandemic (during which, Martin called St. Louis home), and have now settled into Nashville for this, their sixth album. The change in location hasn’t made a huge change in the band’s sound, which is just a refinement of the wider palette they explored on their 2024 self-titled record, veering between radio-friendly acoustic janglers like “Try Try Try” and “You Will Go Far” and more insular fare like the stark piano and vocals of “Untitled.” I prefer the former to the latter, but the album’s brief 36-minute runtime results in a focus that keeps the slower moments from meandering. They saved the best for last with “Wannabe (Radio Queen),” which starts with a distant half-heard radio station that gives way to a strummy, almost John Denver-y verse that bursts to life with fluttering synths, jabs of guitar feedback, even a little expertly deployed pedal steel. The results are downright Wilco-esque, which I guess explains why Hovvdy are opening for Tweedy & Co. for their European tour this month. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Real Numbers, Was It Always This Way (Slumberland): Minneapolis quintet Real Numbers work in that quiet, kind of twee, kind of jangly, but totally poppy vein that I normally eat up (see bands like The Umbrellas), sounding a bit like a mix of Yo La Tengo, the Vaselines, and Boys Don’t Cry-era The Cure. This album caught me from the very first note, though there is a bit of samey-ness to the songs that kept me from fully falling in love with it at full album length. I will happily toss songs from this onto playlists, though, and I hope they catch on at indie radio because little bursts of indie pop goodness like this are what make life worth living. Will I Listen Again?: Yes, but probably mostly a song at a time.
