What makes a good album? It’s a pretty fundamental question, but one that can sometimes get a bit complicated to answer. On some level it depends on what metric you’re trying to gauge in the first place. Do I enjoy it? is a pretty logical place to start. Is it the kind of album that I would readily keep listening to, one that I’d recommend to others. Are the lyrics memorable or relatable, do the melodies get stuck in my head, that sort of thing. Yet, to look at it another way, music is art. Great art often challenges you, rather than making you feel comfortable. It’s not made with the audience in mind as such, more as a way of individual expression. I’ve heard some immensely profound and moving records that I nonetheless have no desire to ever revisit. It’s not about making something pretty, it’s about making something meaningful.

The two needn’t be mutually exclusive though, it’s perfectly possible for an album to have both beauty and depth, but it’s a balance that Lost Weekend really struggles to find. This is easily Phoebe Bridger’s weakest collection of songs. One that feels disappointing, underwhelming, and not worth the wait, given its abundance of repetitive half-baked ideas and lack of engaging songwriting. It feels like a pastiche of her past work. Someone’s lazy impersonation of how they imagine her “cold, sparse sad-girl indie” stereotype would sound, without actually hearing how passionate, thought-provoking and charming her music can be. Lost Weekend has its moments, but they’re fewer and further between than I would have expected.

‘The Governor’s Waltz’ is a wonderfully charming and elegant folk number, with a refreshing degree of lightness and sincerity to it. The mid tempo rocker ‘Bobby’, with its grand emphatic drums, is one of the most energetic cuts in Phoebe’s catalogue, while ‘Haunted’ doubles down on the Americana vibes of Punisher‘s ‘Graceland Too’ with its warm welcoming arrangement of fiddle and mandolin. Album highlight ‘I Can’t Wait’ meanwhile is a charming slow burner that brings a driving rhythm and some gorgeous harmonies with Cameron Winter of Geese. Memorable moments elsewhere on the record are in short supply. The strong hooks present in her past records don’t make an appearance, the creative streak that saw her exploring new sounds prior to this release coming to rest in some cold, moody doldrums. The few melodies on offer feel like variations on a theme, with half a dozen aimless interludes that feel like either more of the same or half finished demos.

Lyrically the album is also a bit of a mixed bag. Granted, describing her father’s funeral as “crying in a suit and tie, you should see the other guy” is an all timer way to open a record. “I was the belle of the Governor’s Ball, hiding in the bathroom like Shelley Duvall” is another example of Phoebe at her best, and I’m also quite fond of “you were made in the image of god, but you look just like your Mom in this picture of us” on ‘Liberty Tree’. Yet given the melting pot of emotions bubbling away beneath everything, I’d expect more striking lines like these to find their way to the surface.

There are two emotional catalysts behind this record; the death of her father, and a new love entering her life. Both major upheavals to ones life in their own right, and both even more complicated beneath the surface, given her strained relationship with her father and her new love arising from the ashes of the old. That’s a lot of tumultuous, emotional push and pull for one person to deal with, let alone try to articulate. I think Phoebe tackles that tempest with real wisdom and maturity. Finding time to reflect on what’s been lost, without glossing over what was never there to begin with. Facing up to the part she played in losing a good thing, and revelling in a second chance at happiness. For how murky the arrangements are, there’s a silver lining of hopefulness that runs through the record. It feels like there’s this unwritten theme at play that the love we lose finds its way back to us in some other form.

It’s a deeply brave and personal project, and I just there was a clearer route in for me to connect with it. I don’t enjoy it as much as I want to, I don’t feel as much as it seems I should. I hope she found some catharsis in making this record, but it’s not structured or articulated in a way that allows me as a listener to share in it. As it stands it doesn’t lure me in with the strong songwriting I’ve come to expect, but nor does it feel like some abrasive piece of high art challenging me to claw my way deeper and open my mind to something new. Listening to Lost Weekend it feels like Phoebe Bridgers has grown as a person, albeit at the cost of regressing as an artist.