Track twelve on her album “Lost Weekend,” “Other Plans,” finds American singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers slowing everything down, nestled between the mantra-like intensity of “Never Going Back!” and the brief interlude “Lost Parade.”
The song begins with a striking image: “I remember the day I made the world, I got blood on my favorite shirt.” This sentence is vintage Bridgers, says NPR’s Ann Powers, the untamed wonder she sees in the commonplace, and it sets a bizarre, almost legendary tone for a track that generally plays quiet and stripped-down. Sparse piano takes care of most of the arrangement, and Bridgers sings in a near monotone style that feels more like confession than performance.
This dreamy feeling persists throughout. “That nite I had a dream I was sleeping,” she sings, nesting a dream within a dream, creating a recursive, almost Escher-like structure to the song. It depicts somebody between memory and imagination, not knowing whether version of events is true.
The chorus states the song’s point: “But our love, our love had other plans for us.” This track follows eleven songs of working through sorrow, family pain and the apprehensive excitement of new romance and provides something else, a meditation on surrender, on realizing a connection has developed beyond anyone’s control.
This song is about shame and loss and difficult family history, so if any of this resonates with something you’re carrying, it may help to speak it through with someone you trust.
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