Phoebe Bridgers
Kyoto
Dead Oceans
Enforced isolation due to the current pandemic has meant that Phoebe Bridgers has been living in the same pair of pyjamas for 8 days straight. That hasn’t stopped her from announcing her second album Punisher will be out in the middle of the year, as well as unveiling her brand new single Kyoto.
It is a change of pace for Bridgers, who says she was sick of writing slow songs. Kyoto meshes cheap sounding keys, chugging drums, and irrepressible horns thanks to Nathaniel Walcott (Bright Eyes). The vocal delivery is rapid fire to match the songs up-tempo rhythm, showing that the Los Angeles native is as adept at pop songs as she is at downtrodden folk. Bridgers is seeing a rapid spike in popularity, but she hasn’t lost any lyrical bite with lines like “I wanted to see the world through your eyes until it happened, then I changed my mind.”
In these strange days of music promotion, Bridgers has played Kyoto as a stripped down acoustic country song on a live feed for Pitchfork, and as a distorted, danceable track through a drum machine in her bathroom for Jimmy Kimmel Live. Whichever way Kyoto is delivered it is a dead set ripper!
CHRIS HAVERCROFT
