Phoebe Bridgers made a salty splash with the 2017 release of Stranger In The Alps, an immersive and deeply vulnerable collection of guitar-driven folk. Since then, she’s been at the center of two supergroups—Better Oblivion Community Center with Conor Oberst and boygenius with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker—and joined The National’s Matt Berninger to both cameo and debut a new song in Between Two Ferns: The Movie. There hasn’t been a dud in the bunch, and now Bridgers is back with a new solo track, “Garden Song.”
The song comes with a bleary new video from her brother, Jackson Bridgers, who, per a press release, asked his sister stoned and then surprised her with a motley crew of oddballs, one of whom is Tig Notaro in a hood. Bridgers keeps it together during the onslaught, passionately working through the song’s gentle, affecting melody, which coasts along some intricate fingerpicking.
She confirmed to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that a new solo album is on the way, though we’ll have to wait for more info. She also described the song as being spawned from her thinking about her hometown and “reoccurring nightmares I have on tour.”
She also revealed that her tour manager is the one providing the song’s backup vocals. “So on ‘Garden Song’ my tour manager sings with me—he’s 6 ft 7. He’s a Dutch man named Jeroen. I realized he had the voice of an angel when he was singing Mitski with me in the van and he was two octaves below me and I was like ‘You sound like a Dutch Matt Berninger from The National.’”
Bridgers has yet to announce a new album, but she’ll likely be previewing one this spring when she tours Japan, Australia, and New Zealand with The National and North America with The 1975. Check out her full list of tour dates here.
