So, in talking about the marvel that was Phoebe Bridgers‘ opening night at L.A.’s Intuit Dome Friday night, which part of the show do you talk about first? Would it the emotionally riveting middle section of the show, in which Bridgers used the no-phones setting to elaborately explore, in song and in monologue, her complicated family dynamics, including figuring out how to grieve the death of a sometimes abusive father who had both a positive and impact on her life? You don’t get moments of candor and quiet devastation like that in an arena show every day, or decade.
Or, would it be the part later where Billie Eilish came out in her pink onesie pajamas? The duet on “Savior Complex” where she and Eilish on the stage danced around in their Peter Pan-inspired costumes? This “Lost Weekend Tour” stop at the Intuit Dome (the first of three sold-out weekend shows there wrapping up her U.S. tour) provided a wealth of moments of moods to talk and write about, so no one can be blamed for picking either the most moving or goofiest bit of the show to single out.
The Eilish cameo will surely outweigh all other highlights in the popular vote that is (for once, picture-less) social media. For the audience in the house down in Inglewood, anyway, it was a magnificently holistic experience, putting the lie to the idea that a Bridgers concert is finally going to be anything but a joyfully celebratory experience, these days. Even if she is also perfectly equipped to answer Leonard Cohen’s final rhetorical question: You want it darker?
Possibly the most talked-about aspect of this tour has also been the most seemingly irrelevant: the artist’s insistence that all smart devices be locked up in Yonder pouches, which is not completely uncommon for shows in smaller theaters where the artists want to keep a secret, but has rarely been done at the arena level. (It’s probably no small expense on the tour budget, when you’ve got 18,000 pouches and the employees to manage them as a line item… so there’s some sacrifice involved for Bridgers as well as the audience.) Having turned in my Apple Watch as well as phone, I kept having the same thought rolling around in my head during Alex G’s opening set, as well as the intermission: I know the end. But I don’t know the time. But probably few on hand would argue that it didn’t make for a more mesmerizing experience, the sensation of being alone in the dark with no more illumination than what was coming off the stage and the audio verification that everyone in the same oversized space is also feeling the feels.
I hate to go overboard in congratulating a crowd, but there was a specifically impressive moment during the starkest number of the night, “Still Standing,” which Bridgers performs just accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, sans band. There was a pin-drop silence throughout this performance, but toward the end of the song, Bridgers’ strumming got so hushed that I feared unnecessary applause would break out because part of the crowd might assume it was ending, as often happens in concerts. But this audience was too savvy to be faked out, and their silence was upheld during that most delicate of passages — which, combined with the lack of the visual intrusion of an 18,000-strong filming crew, made for some heart-ripping magic.
Bridgers did comment on her choice to be a bit of a pioneer in banning phones at this big a level. She framed it not in the language of being a techno-scold but in wanting to allow for the ability to speak freely without self-consciousness about how it would look the next day to a world that cares a lot less than those that managed to score a ticket. In the middle of the part of the show where she spoke about her mom and dad, she said, “I can’t thank you enough for being willing to be without your devices for a couple of hours,” noting that otherwise the revealing things she’d just said “would have been a TikTok moment, where someone who doesn’t like my face would have been commenting on it.” At the same time, she had a sense of humor about it, a little later on, when, right after Eilish left the stage in her costumed PJs, Bridgers blurted, “You don’t have your phones.
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