Before Phoebe Bridgers was smashing guitars in custom Gucci on Saturday Night Live and collaborating with indie legends like Conor Oberst, she played bass in Sloppy Jane, the alt-rock outfit fronted by her high school best friend, Haley Dahl. Though Dahl has since expanded the band to include 11 members—often taking the stage herself wearing nothing but blue paint—the two musicians spent their formative years in a state of constant experimentation, eventually finding a sound and performance style all their own.
Growing up in Los Angeles, the pair had their own remedies for fighting teenage boredom and suburban ennui. “We would ditch class and do absolutely nothing,” says Dahl. “We never actually did anything cool; one time we just sat in Phoebe’s car and ate a tub of cookies.” Bridgers interjects: “And then later we crashed my car—or I crashed my car. I remember the smoke was billowing up, the shock was setting in, and the first words out of your mouth were, ‘Dude, you’re crunched.’”
Of course, Bridgers, arrived in 2020 during the thick of the pandemic, a haunting dissection of death, sex, and self-destruction—and a near-perfect soundtrack to the languid hopelessness that wove itself through a year of upheaval and uncertainty. Though Bridgers and Dahl are now on opposite sides of the country—Bridgers at home in Los Angeles and Dahl in Brooklyn—the two manage to reconvene over video chat to reminisce about high school, being a woman in music, and their many stupid ideas.
