When you have friends and admirers such as Conor Oberst and Ryan Adams working on your side, you just know that there is something worth discovering in this LA-based 23 year-old. So it proves with this mature and magnificent debut album. Obscure title aside, Bridgers' stories unfold through evocative, highly personal imagery, anecdotes and narrative, in a quietly understated, yet confident style, helped along by a falsetto, almost conversational style voice, that sweetly entices you to listen closely. For there are expressive little details strewn throughout, which invariably point to a bigger picture. We're talking mostly relationships here, a favourite topic for young men and women, and how they pile up into an entangled mess, where emotion can sometimes get in the way of logic. Song is that bridge to some kind of understanding.

There's plenty of darkness here, too. Some of it humorous, some of it just plain dark. A self-confessed emo-goth, and with a big love for Elliott Smith, Bridgers sails perilously close to the waters of teenage angst and young love (some of these songs were written when she was still a teen). While she may express an inordinate amount of sadness, depression and even suicidal thoughts, one of her skills is to shine an honest light on these desperate emotions, to counteract them with feelings of hope and turn them into the everyday, which essentially they are.

Some of the songs here are fairly straightforward narratives. Such as the poppiest moment on the album, 'Motion Sickness', which begins with a stunning distorted rhythm chord, and the equally startling couplet: "I hate you for what you did / And I miss you like a little kid." If you've just been introduced to Bridgers' via this song, it would be a slightly false sign, as almost all the rest of Stranger in the Alps is more downbeat in sound, either sparse, or textured with strings. In most cases it is shorn of classic pop structures, beginning with the simply beautiful 'Smoke Signals', which has at its foundation a simple fingerpicked electric guitar, but which is overlaid with touches of Twin Peaks' 'Falling' theme tune, moments of strings and a bass drum as heartbeat, fragments of backwards guitar, and strewn with pop references in detailing a heartfelt relationship that didn't stay the course.

Then there's 'Funeral', a deeply impressive song about how Bridgers is going to have to sing at a friend's funeral but, like 'Motion Sickness', veers off quite subtly into more personal terrain. Here, she sings: "Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time / And that's just how I feel / Always have, and always will". While musically it's adventurous, a discordant guitar opening out to traditional acoustic finger picking territory, before subtle moments of bass synth, fiddle, strings, and reverb pedal steel paint a delicate canvas of very subdued sounds and textures, in keeping with the mood of the content. In the hands of producer Tony Berg , they are there to compliment Bridgers’ voice and playing, and never take centre stage. While 'Demi Moore' is pure Elliott Smith in both its melody and vocal delivery, let alone both their penchants for painting little pictures, with Bridgers again being disarmingly open with her desires and thoughts. As she is also on the vaguely warped piano led and death-folk vibes of 'Killer', which also features John Doe (of LA punk legends, X) on vocals. A song that mentions serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, as well as imaginary death via old age, elegantly mingling all that with thoughts of everlasting love: "I am sick of the chase / But I'm hungry for blood".

Towards the end of Stranger in the Alps, the subtle eclecticism of her music comes through, beginning with 'Chelsea', which employs an old-time country-blues-style vocal melody, and is mixed with the decidedly modern lament of a loved one/friend suffering from heroin abuse in the hallowed rock'n'roll retreat of the Chelsea Hotel. There’s also a duet with Conor Oberst ('Would You Rather' – again, with thoughts of depression, suicide and acts of self-harm featured prominetly, but with friendship at the core) and a gorgeous cover of a recent Mark Kozelek and Jimmy Lavalle song, the achingly troubled 'You Missed My Heart', which lyrically is similar to much of Bridgers' ouput, in painting dark and unsettling imagery within an overall portrait of troubled love.

This collection of songs about life, death, intimacy and relationships is so nuanced and subtle, that several listens are required to fully appreciate the sophistication at work. Not only via the lyrics, which sometimes work on several levels at once in one song, but with her naturally gifted songcraft. Here is a very talented singer/songwriter, one who has been developing her craft since she picked up a guitar and wrote her first song aged just 12. For sure, the debut album is often the culmination of a life's work. Bridgers is simply too talented to be a flash-in-the-pan and, judging by her immersion in life-on-the-edge, we'll be hearing a lot more of her in the future.

Jeff Hemmings

Website: phoebefuckingbridgers.com
Facebook: facebook.com/phoebebridgers