The dissonance of softly singing about screaming to drown thoughts out is smile-inducing rather than clever. Similarly, I love the lines about the hypnotherapist and the crack about the English accent. Regardless, this song sounds fantastic, and all the little production choices serve the song extremely well. Hannah Jocelyn: Hell yeah, I’m always up for wordy choruses! When I heard this song, I originally called it “Julien Baker with a budget,” though Baker clearly has a budget now. There’s a deep thrum so steady and assured that it startles you to realise that you’re at the climax that “why do you sing with an English accent?/I guess it’s too late to change it now” is the saddest line ever sung by someone who has won. Her voice is an pale violet mist floating uncorrupted above grouchy crunches of guitar. The emotional headstone of this guy who was in a band when she was born. Because this song is as contained and non-negotiable as a headstone. Somehow, by the third listen, “you gave me fifteen hundred/to see your hynotherapist/I only went one time” seems a reasonable thing to say about love. So, I’m conflicted: there are elements here that sound badly planned, but there’s also an atmosphere that makes the opening admission “I hate you for what you did/and I miss you like a little kid” into a ten-ton fake-smile dead-on-the-inside-this-month gut punch after the rest of the song contextualizes it.Įleanor Graham: It’s something that only Mad Men characters and pop stars with intellectual capital can do without being laughed or screamed at: use arbitrary memories to hint at half a meaning. On the other hand, the awkward specificity given to each of the ex’s faults makes them each a burst of petty color - how great it would be to find out that the new date you’ve got sings with a hilariously affected English accent, huh? - and in general it’s all disorienting enough to feel a little motion-sick itself. Bridgers’s rhyming schemes are inconsistent, her delivery is aggressively smooth, and the instrumentation swells dramatically at the end of the bridge before promptly forgetting what the build was supposed to be heading towards. Tim de Reuse: The phrase “emotional motion sickness” rolls nicely off the tongue, I grant that, but the metaphor is clunky and inelegant then again, so is most of this song. She’s on a boat! (Editor’s note: she is not on a boat.) Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment.I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES.Email (song suggestions/writer enquiries).If you want to support Bridgers, her excellent collaboration with Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst, Better Oblivion Community Center, is out today on CD and LP. Adams was drowned out last week by the voices of women in the music industry, harmonizing in fury and in liberation. Perhaps the most vicious insults come toward the back of the track, when Phoebe mocks Adams’ phoniness (“Why do you sing with an English accent? / I guess it’s too late to change it now”) and-after he’s told her he was bored when they met and dated-she taunts the singer (who is twenty years her senior), that “you were in a band when I was born.” As if to say, I’m half your age and every bit as talented.īut when Bridgers sings sadly on the chorus, “There are no words in the English language / I could scream to drown you out,” she's wrong. The track starts off with a bang: Bridgers tells Adams “I hate you for what you did,” then follows it up with an assurance that she “faked it every time.” Ouch. Pitchfork originally referred to it as a “ breakup anthem ,” though now we know it’s something far more nefarious. As if all that wasn’t damning enough, allow us to remind you of Phoebe Bridges’ gorgeous song “Motion Sickness” off her debut album Stranger in the Alps, a scathing indictment of Adams’ cowardly antics.
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