Boy Apocalypse returns with a breathtaking solo offering. It’s his rendition of Phoebe Bridgers’ “Funeral,” but a digital resurrection of memory, grief, and emotional instability. But as Bridgers lay in delicate melancholy, Boy Apocalypse builds something entirely new, fragile, fragmented, and ultimately explosive.
His version of the song begins almost as a memory might sound through a unique hard drive. Vocals stretched thin and smoothed out in autotune and vocoder, feeling akin to what a ghost might sound like if it tried to sing through a machine. That is the point. This is no mistake. His voice is a ghost of memory, so over-processed it is hardly recognizable, something like an old photograph that has been scanned so many times that its features blur. As the beat grows heavier, each section seems to pull the emotional weight further from anything so tangible as reality, which recedes into the background. And suddenly, it is gone, a full-bodied alt-rock track in the final moments of the song. What was once a lo-fi apologia is now a polemic.
It is not just someone in grief, it is everyone, all together. And then, as quickly as it has swelled, it is gone, leaving only that frozen stillness, the silence it leaves behind. That is where the Boy Apocalypse hits hardest, not simply in the swell but in the moment that follows. It’s more than a return. This is a transformation. Boy Apocalypse had never desired to do it before, not even when he first made his offering.
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