“Stranger in the Alps” is the debut album of Phoebe Bridgers. It was released in late September 2017 and is categorized as an alternative/indie album. It has become many people’s introduction to Bridgers’s amazing music world.
The opening song on the album is entitled “Smoke Signals.” The name of the song references the practice when someone is stranded, lost or needs help sending a signal with a fire to show where they are. The title of the song has a deeper meaning for the song. The more figurative meaning is that the person is sending signals to anyone they can for help and they are not receiving it. There are some powerful lines throughout the song. One of my favorites is “I’ve buried a hatchet and it’s coming up lavender.” This is saying that the speaker is finally seeing the beauty in their past. Lavender can represent rebirth and healing. This shows that the person Bridger sings about has finally healed, but they accept that it was an event in their life that made them who she was.
Another song on the album is titled “Funeral.” It talks of Bridgers having to deal with her best friend’s death from an overdose. The listener can tell that during this time it shows her coping mechanism with the whole situation. It does send her into a sort of depressive state. This is implied when she says, “Jesus Christ I’m so blue all the time.” She is stuck in this state and cannot escape it. No matter how hard she tries or how happy she is for a moment, it always leads back to being “blue all the time.” She supports this when, after one line, she says, “I always have and always will.” She repeated this two times like she was saying it to herself. She is almost trying to tell herself she will always feel like that.
The final song that I would like to talk is about another very powerful and moving song that is only on the deluxe version of the soundtrack. It is called “It’ll All Work Out.” This song is a cover of the same song by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The song’s main message is that as the title says, “It’ll all work out.” Bridgers says this so many times and gives excuses that, even though this time is over in their life, it will still all work out. As the ending lyrics say, “It’ll never go away / but it all works out.” This is saying that even though the memory will always be there, everything will be just fine in the end. The song sounds like the person singing is trying to convince themselves that it will work out and, by the end, they truly do believe it.
The album as a whole is a masterpiece and truly feels like Bridgers took her time and made sure that her debut album was perfect. It takes the listener through so many emotions like the one I talked about today being in such a depressive state you do not know what to do or even being helpless and feeling like you need help, but it is hard to reach out for it. I would give this album a ten out of ten and I would 100% recommend this album to anyone who likes Bridgers’s work.
