Phoebe Bridgers grows up and goes home on her latest album.

The Pasadena-born singer released her long awaited third album, “Lost Weekend,” on Friday. Following the 2020 release of her acclaimed solo sophomore album “Punisher” and her 2023 Grammy-winning record with alternative-indie supergroup boygenius, Phoebe Bridgers has shot to stardom, selling out venues from the Hollywood Bowl to Madison Square Garden with her signature storytelling.

Then, she disappeared.

On “Lost Weekend,” Bridgers effectively turns the distance she created from the world into one of the industry’s most authentic perspectives on grief, love and longing – traits that have defined her acclaimed songwriting but delivered with more maturity and emotional expansiveness than ever before.

When boygenius announced its hiatus in 2024, Bridgers retreated from the public eye, leaving behind a career that foreshadowed a path to A-list superstardom. Bridgers, however, wasn’t willing to let the machine of the music industry dictate her path any longer. As she candidly put it on “I Know the End,” the closing track on “Punisher,” she was “not afraid to disappear.”

Her comeback began with a paper flyer for a phone-free concert to be hosted at the alleged UFO crash site of Roswell, New Mexico in May. It quickly turned into a cross-country pop-up tour, creating an internet frenzy as fans fought to secure a coveted ticket for a rare glimpse of Bridgers in a tiny venue and the chance to hear her mythologized third solo album. Somehow, “Lost Weekend” manages to live up to the astronomical hype, justifying the six year wait.

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While ghosts and skeletons were the primary motifs for Bridgers’ previous albums, she’s never been quiet about wanting to be saved by aliens. On “Lost Weekend,” she’s become one herself, observing Earth from afar.

“The Outside” opens the album as Bridgers wallows in her outsider status – complete with an extraterrestrial voice crafted through the synthesizing capabilities of a vocoder. As the album progresses, it’s clear her outsider perspective is actually her strength and the album’s central source of growth as she examines what these past six years have made of her. “I’m frozen in place / But not afraid,” she sings. Bridgers, known for her candor in her lyrics, turns “Lost Weekend” into a lyrical treasure trove from its opening track.

Lead single “Lost Boys” released June 25 reimagines the singer as an all-knowing elf on a track that features vocals from boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. “Lost Boys, come find me,” she sings with a mischievous grin in the music video. Most of the songs on “Lost Weekend” are tangentially about one of three “Lost Boys” in her own life – her late father, her ex-fiancé, her new love – though these figures merely orbit around Bridgers. Over the next 14 tracks, she comes to accept that in order to find herself, she must first get lost in grief and in love and learn to allow all those complex feelings to coexist – one of the album’s surest signs of maturation as she looks at feelings from a distance. Bridgers is ultimately the one bouncing back and forth between the five stages of grief, vulnerably and painstakingly documenting every feeling before the moment passes – and doing so splendidly.

Bridgers has always had a knack for writing lyrics that leave listeners with a lump in theirs throat over eerily familiar feelings. However, “Lost Weekend” takes her skill to a new level, balancing the uncomfortably specific and the universally relatable. Here, the singer-songwriter’s growth is most visible. This is best exhibited on tracks like “The Governor’s Waltz,” where she lets listeners know why she called off her engagement in the bluntest of terms: “You promised that you’d never leave / But maybe you’ll do it for me.”

Writing about being heartbroken and breaking hearts may be Bridgers’ speciality, but her recent love life granted her the opportunity to write about being in a healthy, fulfilling relationship for the first time. On “Lost Weekend,” she not only takes on the new challenge but excels. Between the album’s melancholic tracks about loss, these love songs offer relief, where the unconventional way of Bridgers’ fascination with morbidity manages to come across as deeply romantic. More importantly, they reveal a version of Bridgers her earlier work rarely highlighted – an artist enjoying and lingering in love. After listening to the rest of her discography, fans might find it jarring to hear Bridgers singing about loving someone who loves her back, but when she sings, “Let’s go missing!” they can trust she’s being earnest.

The album’s undeniable cohesiveness comes from songs relying on one another to reveal new facets to Bridgers’ story. The emotional roller coaster runs smoothly. Tracks about her romantic relationships set the precedent for those about the relationship to her father to leave a greater impact. Her ability to break the cycle by walking away from situations that aren’t serving her anymore and dive into those that might is remarkable. The tracks documenting her newfound perspective are followed by reflections on how her upbringing greatly complicated her perception of what it means to love and be loved. Bridgers dedicated the album to her father, whose death she announced in 2023.

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On 2020’s “Kyoto,” Bridgers threatened, “I’m gonna kill you / If you don’t beat me to it,” but after the death of her dad, an older version of Bridgers has been forced to face the reality of those words. “I can’t imagine you dead / But you are every day / Thank you for everything,” she sings on “Still Standing.” The track is a devastating musical eulogy that ties together how her loss has led her to be assertive in who she chooses to love and let love her. That progression from “Kyoto” to “Still Standing” is the clearest evidence of her growth – anger that has been complicated by grief and acceptance.

Throughout “Lost Weekend,” Bridgers’ growth off the record is made evident. The idea of wanting has been another familiar theme across her discography. In the time between “Punisher” and “Lost Weekend,” she got everything she wanted – a successful career and someone to love her. The monkey’s paw doesn’t discriminate, however, and as she puts it on “Haunted,” “If you’re gonna make a wish / Then you better be specific / You’re gonna have to live it every day.” She curiously sings the line laughing at the sheer absurdity of her indescribable success, but her ability to laugh at herself – accompanied by her friends and jovial, folksy instrumentation – showcases how much she’s evolved as both an individual and artist during her time away from the spotlight.

Working as a perfect companion piece to “Punisher,” Bridgers finds herself spinning out through space on “Lost Weekend,” with her delicate voice and a blend of hypnotizing strings and synths to match. But before she loses control, she always finds the power to take the wheel of her ship, sending each song into an unexpected direction either lyrically or sonically to flex her control. That control is what separates “Lost Weekend” from its predecessors. Bridgers is fully back, on her own terms and in her own words, picking the pieces up and putting herself back together through sound. As she previously confessed on “Kyoto,” she’s a self-proclaimed “liar,” but with an album this vulnerable, she’s given the world reason to believe her.

With phones being banned from Bridgers’ upcoming tour, filmed sightings of the singer will likely remain few and far between. Thankfully, “Lost Weekend” speaks for itself through otherworldly sounds and deeply intimate lyrics. Bridgers is at her best when she really allows herself to get lost in the music, which can make the handful of tracks clocking in under three minutes on the backside of the album feel like they’re just scratching the surface of her powers. For the most part, however, the album comes alive as a whole, transforming into a 16-track feast for the ears. Fans will discover that the six-year journey back to Bridgers’ side of the universe was well worth the wait.

After launching to stardom, Bridgers needed space. She’s finally back on Earth, and fans will be pleased to find “Lost Weekend” is the “end of wanting” their dreams.