The New Yorker Radio Hour - Live at Home Part II: Phoebe Bridgers

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Phoebe Bridgers’s tour dates were cancelled—she was booked at Madison Square Garden, among other venues—so she performs songs from her recent album, “Punisher,” from home. The critic Amanda Petrusich talks about the joys of Folkways records, and the novelist Donald Antrim talks about a year in which he suffered from crippling depression and rarely left his apartment, finding that only music could be a balm for his isolation and fear. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Okay, so here is a first turntable. This is a really excellent turntable because it plays 78s as well as 45s and 33s. There's also like a cassette player in the corner here. This cabin is like 1,200 square feet. The three turntables is a bit much, I think. In the spring, our music critic Amanda Petrusich went into quarantine just a couple of hours away from New York. city. She's isolated from other people, but also for most of her vast record collection,

she could only carry one or two boxes of records with her. And for somebody who cares as much about music as Amanda does, those are pretty hard choices. And here are some records. Um, okay. Donnie and Joe Emerson, this record is wild. Um, John Coltrane, more John Coltrane, more John Coltrane. Leonard, Cohen for when it's late at night and you've had too much wine. Muriel Haggard's greatest hits for when it's three in the afternoon and you've had too much wine. Uh, Neil Young. So I feel like if you were to ask any music fan, you know, like right now, pick, pick the five things you take with you, you know, to the other side. And you don't know when you're coming back again.

I think it would incite a kind of panicked meltdown in most of them. It's hard to anticipate you know, what you're going to want and need and when. So you kind of start taking this weird inventory of yourself and the contents of your mind and sort of what you need to get by. I have a company called New York City Blues. I have some Lightning Hopkins, folk songs of Puerto Rico. That's another Folkways record. Music of the Bahamas, that's another Folkways record.

Traditional Cajun Fiddle, a great Folkways record. So Mississippi, John Hurd. So I've been listening to a lot of releases put out on a label called Folkways, which was founded in New York City in 1948 by Mo Ash and Marion Dissler, and they were interested in capturing and preserving folk culture, kind of in the broadest and most expansive sense of the phrase. And they released some pretty esoteric stuff, poetry, spoken word, instructional records,

a lot of field recordings of people. I would say I own probably about three dozen folkways releases, and they're the kinds of albums that I buy whenever I see one, regardless of whether I've heard anything on it before, regardless of whether I recognize the artist, put it on the turntable and it's truly anything could come out of your speakers. Okay, I'm going to put on folk songs of the Catskills. So one album I've been listening to a lot while up here is called Folk Songs of the Catskills. They were sung by a woman named Barbara Moncure,

and her singing partner is a guy named Harry C. Emson, who specialized in animal husbandry and was the official historian for the town of Kingston, which is very close to where I am. So every day I looked about for a good-looking man, well, my wish, it seems it came too soon on a Sunday afternoon, as onwards home from church,

When I spend time in a new place, I think I like to get to know it by getting to know its vernacular music. That's a really useful way in for me. It's a way of getting closer to the spirit of the place. I will say I am presently covered in Poison Ivy, so I still have a lot to learn about the cat skills. But this has been a kind of a useful way to start that education. My Jen stepped out and so did I to take a pleasure's roam. My Gens stepped out at... Tuareg music of the Southern Sahara,

which is one of those records I picked up without really knowing very much about it or what it would sound like or what it would contain or who had made it. And I've just found it wildly transporting. There's a lot of ambient noise. At one point, a baby starts crying. You can hear animals.

They're scrappy. I mean, it's the sort of sound of people in a room or people in a field or people on a porch making music together, making music in the kind of precise place and way where it was intended to happen. I don't know, something about the world slowing down and I think the size of things shrinking. This sort of matches it. It's a time of closeness with your community and the people who are immediately around you.

So this feels like the right way to kind of celebrate that or to lean into that. I've also been listening a lot to a compilation of recordings. by Joseph Spence, the Bahamian guitarist. It's called The Complete Folkways Recordings from 1958. And when Joseph Spence made most of these recordings, he was in his late 40s. He'd worked most of his life as a stonemason on the Bahamian island of Andros. And he was recorded by a folklorist named Samuel Charters and his wife, Anne. And when they first encountered Spence, they described him as sitting on top of a pile of bricks

and entertaining some workers who were nearby hammering the frame of a house. together. It's so nice. I miss the experience of live music so deeply and so profoundly that it is, yeah, anything that can kind of approximate that in whatever way I can on record, to get as close to that feeling as I can in a safe way is just so welcome. For me, I've been really doubling down on the records that make me feel, you know, like I'm part of a kind of a vast and weird continuum of humanity. They remind me in this really visceral way that no anguish is really new. And humanity has overcome a lot of monstrous things before.

I like remembering that there is a past and there is a future. That's music critic Amanda Petrusich. Amanda, devoted readers of your work in The New Yorker might not know you as a folk music aficionado. You're generally covering new artists, people coming right down the pike. And one of the artists you've been paying a lot of attention to this year is Phoebe Bridgers. You profiled her when she was releasing her second solo album called Punisher. Tell me a little bit about her. Who is she? And why is her work so interesting to you? Phoebe Bridgers is a singer and songwriter from Los Angeles. And her work is really intimate and intense, but also sort of dark and funny. And I wanted to profile her

because I think her records really speak to what it's like to be young right now, when the future seems like such a murky, almost impossible idea. Phoebe Bridgers struggles a lot in her work with this question of, how do you think about starting your life when every time you turn on the news, someone else is telling you that there's no tomorrow? And you spoke with her in the summer at a really intense moment in the midst of the massive protest for racial justice around the country. It's really good to see you, dude.

It's so good to see you. I know. I miss the world, but it's nice to see you. Yeah, likewise. I know we obviously met for the first time in New York City in late February just shortly before the coronavirus pandemic really took hold in the U.S. And then the last time we talked, you were driving around L.A. with me on FaceTime. The first time I've ever reported a magazine profile that way. And I remember thinking that we were living through such a dramatic kind of world-changing once-in-a-lifetime moment. but now somehow we are living through another one of those moments. I'm just curious. I just wanted to check in with you. How have you been metabolizing recent events?

I've been metabolizing them with joy, I guess. Like just white people being silenced on social media also I think is the best thing that has ever happened. Like truly. It was like amazing to watch people struggle with that. but also great to watch people kind of adapt. I love the weird corner it's put capitalism in. Right, yeah.

And in the midst of all this, you're releasing an album. Yeah. Which I want to talk to you about. So part of being the subject of a New Yorker profile is knowing that the writer of the profile is going to call everyone you know and say, hey, tell me about Phoebe. And so one of the people I spoke to when I was working on my piece about you was Matt Berninger, the front man of the indie rock band, The National. And he gave me this quote that I thought was sort of incredible where he said, Phoebe writes so well about boredom and sadness. And I'm

curious if you feel like that seems like a pretty true description of your work to you. Yeah, I think so. I think I never really try to tackle giant things. I just kind of go into writing with whatever information I have in that actual moment. And a lot of the time when I'm writing something, I am bored and sad. I will use any excuse to not write. So writing is like, I have this weird guilt about how I didn't do it earlier. And I'm just kind of daring myself to write about whatever comes to mind. So I think I just kind of naturally write about boredom and sadness that way. Yeah, that makes sense. And I feel like this quarantine for me, I've tried really hard to have a kind of routine because otherwise I think it is you're sort of plagued by guilt nonstop.

Right. Well, this feels like the perfect moment for you to, to perform Kyoto. And so this song deals with, you and I talked about this a bit, some pretty painful feelings of alienation and a failed reconciliation, in this case with your dad. Can you tell me a little about

what was going on for you when you wrote it? Kyoto is about, it's a little tongue in cheek about my own strong opinions weakly held. You know, like just feeling, super hateful and resentful,

and then knowing that it just dissipates with, like, one conversation. My inability to, like, predict that, too. I think on the first record, there's some resentment that's just kind of, like, full throttle and not held back at all. And I think maybe I'm becoming a little more self-aware that it's all a little more complicated

than just saying how I feel about it. If I say how I feel about it in the moment, it's just ridiculous. Like the, I'm going to kill you line. is not true. Luckily. That's a great line though. Check check.

That's the only focal warm-up that works from me, by the way. All right. I will mute you and play it. The old song, I got bored at the temple, looked around at the 7-Eleven. The band of the speed train

went to the arcade. I wanted to go, but I didn't. He called me from the pay phone. They still got pay phones. It cost a dollar. To tell me you're getting sober and saw I've been driving out to the suburbs. To park at the goodwill and stare at the camera.

Brother, he said you called on his birthday. We're off by like 10 days, but you get a few points for trying. Remember get the good one. Are you getting used to playing for no audience, sort of performing for a screen? Kind of. It's hard to get used to. I hope I never get used to it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're directing a lot of energy out, and probably less is coming back in. It's got to be a kind of a weird flip-flopping of the normal performance experience. Totally. Yeah, it's very weird. Yeah, I have that, like, the main thing is, like, not forgetting words.

I feel like I didn't realize how much of a tool I use. other people for like remembering my own songs. You mean people in the crowd like mouthing them back to you? Yeah. Oh, that's wild. So I know you started playing guitar as a teenager. We talked a little bit about, you know, the guitar being a kind of rebellion against your very sweet mom who wanted you to play the piano.

But I'm curious about when you started writing your own songs. I think I wrote my first song when I was like 11 and it was called the Only bird flying the other way, which I was not. I was a private school white girl, and I thought I was so different and that nobody understood me, which is wild. So yeah, humiliating. Oh, the only bird flying the other way. Yeah. I mean, it's very funny, but also kind of sweet. It's kind of tender. Yeah. So if there were not a pandemic going on right now, what would your life look like? I think. I think I'd be on tour still. Maybe I'd be in Europe.

I've on purpose not looked at my canceled dates. Like a couple weeks back, someone was like, where would you be playing? And I was like, Madison Square Garden. It's just painful. I shouldn't laugh. It's so painful. Of course. I mean, besides performing, what's your favorite part of being out on the road?

Just being, it's like summer camp. being surrounded by my friends and feeling just you're never as famous as you are like five blocks from the venue you're about to play so that's fun too just like living in a weird simulation where I'm the most famous person is funny like going to a coffee shop and everyone's like we're going to the show and then five people at a table over like we're going to the show and I'm like ha ha ha I don't ever feel like that in my real life so uh I really can't thank you enough for doing this, Phoebe. I feel like we are quarantined bros for life. Yes, seriously. After these past few months. Seriously. And it has really been a pleasure speaking with you again.

Thanks, dude. Okay. Close my eyes and fantasize. Three clicks and I'm home. When I get back, I'll get up and lay back down. Romanticize. There's no place like my room. But you had to go. Like a wave that could burn out and sound chasing. That's Phoebe Bridgers back at her home in Los Angeles in the summer, playing I Know the End. Amanda Petrusich profiled her for the magazine, and you can find that piece at New Yorker.com. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour with more in a minute. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Amanda Petrusich, a music critic for The New Yorker.

And I'm David Remnick. We've been talking about listening to music, especially the role of music, during times of turmoil and real stress. Music keeps me alive. It really does. Whether it's the mellow tone of Lester Young's saxophone and Billy Holiday singing to it or the chronic, these things are essential to life. I don't know what I do without it. It's like imagining life without food or drink.

I agree completely. It's a lifeline, and I'm grateful for it. And on that note, let's close the program today with an essay by Donald Antrim. It was published around the shutdown, and it speaks to the question of what music can do at a time like this when we're not seeing family and friends. We're not getting out the way we used to. Antrim's piece is called Music Will Be Important. We've adapted it for radio, and here it is read by Russell G. Jones. We're all spending some time alone now.

I once spent the better part of a year by myself in my apartment. It was 2016. I was not in quarantine. I was sick with what we and our doctors call major depression. I would rather call it suicide, which I see not as an event or a deed, but as the natural ongoing outcome of trauma and isolation. And though at times I functioned, I nonetheless could not bring myself to write or read much,

or cook for myself or exercise, or open the mailbox. I let the mail sit until the mailman, unable to fit all the flyers and bills and tax notices, emptied the box, wrapped everything with a rubber band, and left the bundle on my entryway floor. The problem was terror. The problem was that I was not safe. I'd lost my sense of belonging and lived in objection lonely

cut off trying not to die but working just to stay alive maybe at some time in your life you've hidden yourself away and scurried past the mailbox let the phone ring if it rings at all

maybe you've distanced yourself from friends or lost them for good. What will happen to you if you go outside? And we like to say that we're wired, as if we're computers or electrical grids. You know, my wiring is shot. She needs recharging. He's in shutdown mode.

Another thing we like to say is that music soothes the savage beast. The expression is a misquote from the playwright William Congreve, who in fact writes of the savage breast, not beast. Music has charms to sue the savage breast, to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak. A savage breast is what we feel when we're alone too long. The year I was alone, I sat on the sofa and listened to the music that had mattered to me when I was young,

with Stappenwolf and Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath. Sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn that year, when I couldn't easily leave the house, I listened. I was always shaking and hyperventilating. I felt my body pressed down as if by some weight that I could not see. It was a feeling of being crushed from every side. Maybe you've felt this. Sometimes I got up from the sofa and, paste. But then

I might stop to adjust the speakers. I put my gear on platforms made to dampen vibration and I added big fat speaker cables. And as I fiddled with the system, it came to sound,

to feel more and more close. I put on the music that I came to later in life, jazz and electronic and experimental music and Bartak and Mozart and Bach. My shoulders dropped.

The muscles in my neck and face relaxed. And I breathed more deeply. I prayed. And I wept. I stood at the window and I watched the people on the sidewalk below, the parents with children, groups of friends, neighbors bringing home groceries. I thought of all of us who, like me at that time,

lived in danger and in fear. A fear that might seem inexplicable yet also concrete and real. Dear God, take care of my brothers and sisters. Take care of our families. Take care of the people in hospitals and on the streets. I put on records and prayed. I was, we could say, sitting in music. I wasn't wired.

I was wire. The sound waves were wire, and the air in the room was wire, and the walls were wire, and the books in their shelves were wire, and my body was wire. I found my communion with others who were alone, and I might notice when I felt you near me

that I was tapping my foot, and my thoughts were for the, moment, clear, and that I could smile a bit. That was Russell G. Jones performing Music Will Be Important by Donald Antrim, which was published in The New Yorker. My co-host today was music critic Amanda Petrusich. Amanda, thank you so much. Oh my God, my pleasure. Amanda is the author of Do Not Sell at any price, a book about hunting for rare records, and you can read her all the time at New Yorker.com. Thanks for listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. Hope you enjoyed the show, and I hope you'll join us next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon-N-Corri-Ran-Corby, Calaliyah, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Gau-Fenn and Putubuele, Louis-Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Alison McAdam, Morgan Flannery, Mung Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.