For a generation of metal fans who grew up with the immaculate destruction of Godflesh’s seminal debut LP, 1989’s Streetcleaner, a collaboration between its frontman/guitarist Justin Broadrick and indie-folk superstar Phoebe Bridgers might seem unorthodox.
But they’d be guilty of not paying attention. Broadrick is there because of his solo work with Jesu, formed in 2004 when Godflesh split up (Jesu is named for the last song on Godflesh’s Hymns).
Jesu replaced the ugly industrialism of Godflesh with melancholy beauty – post-metal, shoegaze, whatever – and yes there would be 8-string guitars in the mix, the DNA of the super-heavy was in there, but emotionally, Bridgers and Broadrick are coming from a similar place.
And as Broadrick reveals in a new interview with Guitar World, Bridgers is a huge fan of Jesu, which is why she tapped him up to work on a couple of tracks for her new album, Lost Weekend. They worked on material that would become Bobby, and he’s credited on electric guitar for Best Dressed, a bonus track on the CD/vinyl release – a song Broadrick describes as “fucking amazing”.
“The collaboration was nothing to do with Godflesh,” he says. “A lot of people in the media wanted to run with: ‘Oh, Godflesh man works with Phoebe Bridgers!’ I was really upset about it, because I’m not there because of Godflesh. On the album, I’m credited as Justin Broadrick/Jesu.”
Broadrick says Bridgers has no knowledge of Godflesh whatsoever. She might occasionally play a B.C. Rich Warlock onstage but she was not sitting by her stereo learning the riff to Rats or recreating the atonal mewling of Broadrick’s guitar on Head Dirt.
Bridgers discovered Jesu through the 2016 collab album Broadrick recorded with Sun Kil Moon, which featured guests such as Will Oldham, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell and former Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley.
“She’s got no interest in that at all,” explains Broadrick. “But she loves Jesu. She just absolutely adores it. She knows every fucking song. So she came to me over that.”
Broadrick’s role on Lost Weekend might have been bigger. He contributed a lot of ideas for Bobby, but Bridgers had a team of A-list producers, including Jack Antonoff and regular collaborators Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska, all of whom contributed to the writing. Bridgers wanted the “full weight of Jesu” in there but they had to make a “consistent” record.
“To suddenly have a song on that new album where you've got me playing sad riffs on an eight-string as low-tuned as humanly possible wouldn't be entirely consistent with the record, and I get that,” he says.
But that moment might still come. Broadrick says he and Bridgers are working on a song for a film soundtrack. Still, he made his mark on Lost Weekend. Bridgers had asked for one track; Broadrick sent three. Her production team used pieces of his guitar on Bobby, while Best Dressed gets to exactly why Bridgers wanted Broadrick in the first place.
“It’s slower, even more melancholy,” he says. “It’s a really sad fucking track, man. And that's what she wanted from me. She just wants to get that juxtaposition of heavy but really super-sad. Like what Jesu does.
“She was just like, ‘You do something that people in melancholy music don't do, and it's the heavy factor. I need to get what you do into my music.’”
Guitar World's full Justin Broadrick interview will be published later this month.
