“Will you stop doing that?!?!?!?!” shrieked Karen (a stranger in the row in front of me) directly into my face as I “wooh”ed for Phoebe Bridgers to return to the stage for an encore to cap off her first-ever, extremely sold out show at Xfinity Mobile Arena this Monday, September 28th. Karen apparently felt Phoebe owed her an encore… At first I felt sorry for Bridgers (as much as you can feel sorry for a celebrity) having a character like this within the spectrum of her fandom… But then I actually felt happy for her… As I’ve often said, few things would seem to be a truer sign of having “made it” than filling a sold-out show with people who have never been to a concert before…
Credit: Wes Ellis / Instagram: @atwes
For the record, she did return to the circular, rotating B stage to close the evening with “Lost Weekend (Reprise)” and “Scott Street,” off of 2017 debut LP Stranger in the Alps, but by that point the vibe was kind of over for me… However, the other 17,999 (or so) in attendance embodied an attitude far from the entitlement of Miss Karen… In fact, they seemed to gleefully surrender their cell phones to Yondr pouches for the privilege of experiencing an arena-rock spectacle from arguably the premiere singer/songwriter of her generation… They even did so notably early, with nearly the entire arena already packed by the halfway point of Alex G’s opening set…
Credit: Wes Ellis / Instagram: @atwes
My last experience seeing Phoebe Bridgers headlining solo was in February of 2018 when an audience split evenly between the WXPN and R5 crowds sold out the 650-capacity music hall of World Café Live (I’ve joked in recent years that if the show, which was opened by Soccer Mommy, were to happen now, it would sell out the arena.) Well, the crowd that showed up for The Lost Tour (in support of LP #3, Lost Weekend, which dropped in August) this week could have sold out the University City venue nearly 28 times… a crowd that featured the sartorial stylings of nearly every generation of teen angst, from flower children and riot grrrls (among other varieties of punks) to several flavors of goths and a plethora of Millennial hipsters and those who have adopted their wardrobe, along with many girls donning some take on Phoebe’s own skeleton duds.
Credit: Wes Ellis / Instagram: @atwes
It’s easy to have mixed feelings about poptimism (I know I do), but I think the greatest thing it has proven is that classically poignant songwriting and live music spectacles don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and I’m not sure any tour has better exemplified that than The Lost Tour. The hour-and-forty-five-minute, 26-song set featured selections from all of Phoebe’s full-lengths, each of which have provided some of the most popularly potent indie folk of recent years (coming to define the genre of “sad girl music”), accompanied by a cocoon-like dome on the mainstage from which Bridgers and band emerged after opening the performance with the first verse of Lost Weekend’s “The Outside” (The dome went on to hang above the stage, where its inside served as a video screen for the majority of the evening.) and a circular, rotating B Stage at the back of the venue’s floor, enabling those with the slightly “less desirable” GA floor tickets to essentially experience eight songs as if they were seeing Bridgers in a nightclub.
Credit: Wes Ellis / Instagram: @atwes
While 2020 sophomore LP, and mainstream breakthrough, Punisher seemed to provide many of the audience’s favorite moments, including “Kyoto,” “Garden Song,” and “I Know the End,” which wrapped up the main set (and Bridgers’ time on the main stage) in elegantly epic proportions, many of the evening’s highlights came from her first and most recent LPs, including the aforementioned “Scott Street,” Phoebe’s final performance (Her band closed out the night with “Never Going Back!”). Following the first verse of “The Outside,” the show officially seemed to begin with Stranger in the Alps‘ “Motion Sickness,” a high point of her shows at Xfinity Mobile Arena and World Café Live alike, followed by “Kill Me,” a Lost Weekend standout whose studio version features Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner.
Credit: Wes Ellis / Instagram: @atwes
The most memorable portion of the night, though, came about halfway through, during Phoebe’s first stint on the second stage, which featured back-to-back performances of perhaps each of her album’s best tracks in a row. After opening the B stage with “Lost Weekend,” the Dead Oceans singer/songwriter performed a rendition of “Funeral,” her ten-ton-truck of a heroin ballad, that felt every bit as intimate as it did when she was playing actual music halls. Up next was “Graceland Too,” arguably Bridgers’ most impressive solo song, even though (like “I Know the End,” which follows the song on Punisher) it’s sort of a boygenius song… followed by Lost Weekend’s “Haunted,” a sonic sister of “Graceland Too’”s classic Americana.
Credit: Wes Ellis / Instagram: @atwes
However, likely the most charming moments of the evening came upon Miss Bridgers’ return to the main stage, where she serenaded the basketball arena with a recent and uncharacteristic song of smittenness, a celebration of her earliest and sappiest memories with longtime partner Bo Burnham (who co-wrote seven of Lost Weekend’s tracks), “Bobby,” which was followed by a performance exclusive to the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection. Bridgers was joined onstage by local legend, and the show’s opener, Alex G, where the two performed the classic fourth track of his seventh studio album, “Bobby.”
