Phoebe Bridgers – Stranger in the Alps

Stranger in the Alps is the debut studio album by  musician Phoebe Bridgers, released by Dead Oceans in 2017. The album’s title is a reference to the edited-for-TV version of the film The Big Lebowski. In the original, unedited version, Walter Sobchak says, “Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?”; however, the line is changed in the edited-for-TV version to “Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?”

Stranger in the Alps is a collection of songs about intimacy, documenting how our relationships affect the way we view ourselves and interact with others.

The design includes a vintage looking photograph of a person in the foreground, I think a child, standing in the middle of a field along with a dog in the background which looks oddly large in proportion. In the background there is a blue sky there is a small rainbow preceded by lots of foliage, along with a farming trailer, fence and feeding trough for animals. In the top right corner we see the artist name and name of the album, this seems to be written in a hand written font, a little crooked. What I love is the figure in the front which seems to have been turned into a little sheet ghost using acrylic paint.

The entire vintage background image creates a feeling of home, I’m really comforted looking at it due to the pastel sky and rainbow with lush greens, it looks like a cosy paradise, this harmonises well with the handwritten title, it almost looks like an annotation in an old photo book, coloured white which not only stands out well, but also matches with the ghost in the foreground.

The main focal point is the ghost in the front, I love the handcrafted effect the acrylic paint has, the way you can still see the original figure in the background due to the transparency which adds to the ethereal theme.