Photo by Christopher Ikonomou (Xe/He)
“FUCK THE COPS!” rings out in the crowd during an otherwise quiet performance of “Smoke Signals” during Phoebe Bridgers’ first hometown show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. After a pandemic release of her second LP “Punisher” in 2020, Bridgers played across the country these past two months on her Reunion Tour alongside drummer Marshall Vore, bassist Emily Retsas, guitarist Harrison Whitford, pianist Nick White, violinist Emily Kohavi, and trumpeter JJ Kirkpatrick. Extra special shoutout to stagehand Mark who received deserving cheers every time he fixed a technical difficulty.
This is the first concert I attended with my own money after listening to Bridgers’ music nonstop for the last three years. I went with a close (fellow queer and trans) friend of mine and my undying memory of every lyric in Phoebe Bridgers’ discography. Waiting in line after an hour-long Uber ride felt like walking into an old friend’s house after a long time away, bursting with a paradoxical melancholic excitement. After getting our vaccine cards and bags checked by the nice staff members at the door, we waded through the crowds of black clothes, brightly-colored hair, and skeleton onesies and breathed in the atmosphere before stepping into one of three hour-long merchandise lines.
We made it to the table as soon as opener and Pasadena native Charlie Hickey took the stage at precisely 8 p.m. You wouldn’t expect to see a straight man in a polo shirt open for a bisexual emo witch, but his music had a soft and strong nostalgia so similar to Bridgers’ music that I added it to my favorites playlist immediately. After spending an expectedly large amount of money on an awesome comic-style poster (by H.E. Creative) and two tour-exclusive shirts (bringing my collection to seven total), we took our seats in the dead center of Section B to watch the rest of the opener. Hickey played most of his 2021 EP “Count the Stairs,” the final two songs in duet with his “boss,” Bridgers herself (the crowd went wild). The two met when Hickey was just 13 while Bridgers was still in high school, and their origin story still seems to hold true today: Hickey strummed bashfully beside Bridgers who held one hand behind her back and rocked absentmindedly, looking like two friends performing together at their high school talent show. After a solid performance of his most popular song “Ten Feet Tall,” the house lights went up and Hickey took his exit.
Thirty minutes later, the lights dim again and “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas blasted out of the speakers, only to be immediately drowned out by cheers as Bridgers and her band took the stage in their trademark skeleton outfits. The whole crowd stood like Sunday mass as they played the first chord of Bridgers’ 2017 hit, “Motion Sickness.” This song speaks to Phoebe Bridgers’ experiences with abuse in her past relationship with producer Ryan Adams. The paradox of heartbreak and longing surrounding the end of a harmful relationship resonates with my own experiences with unhealthy relationships, queer and not, throughout my life. So much of my connection to Bridgers’ music comes from my own experiences with queerness, love (and lack thereof), and broken relationships, themes she frequently threads into her lyrics and sound (along with stories of child abuse, religion, and mental illness). The crowd cheered as the final line faded out: “I wanna know what would happen if I surrender to the sound,” Bridgers impressively holding the last note as long as she could.
They go on to play “Punisher”’s minute-long instrumental intro, “DVD Menu,” followed by the deeply resonating “Garden Song,” about “all your good thoughts that you have becoming real, and all the shitty stuff that you think becoming real, too” (she told Apple Music upon her album’s release). The song entranced the audience, a good few seconds of total silence sweeping over all of us as the music stopped (until once again, we roared in cheers). She prefaced her next song with a quick line and a half-laugh: “this song is for anyone who’s ever had to lie to CPS.” The cheery rock-ballad “Kyoto” began, a pop-up story book unfolding on the projection screen behind her showing an illustrated scene of a city block in Japan. As aforementioned, she sings about growing up with her little brother and their alcoholic father; “I don’t forgive you, but please don’t hold me to it” introduces the second chorus as the audience’s quiet singalong turns into enthusiastic, alone-in-your-car singing. It ends in a powerful electric strum, going directly into the album’s titular track “Punisher.” The audience falls back into singing just above a whisper, appreciating the ambient echo of Nick White on piano paired with Phoebe’s haunting vocals; she sings about her neighborhood and fear of becoming a punisher to her favorite artists. The song ends peacefully with the word “stop,” once again hanging in complete silence for a few moments, much like the autumn chill in the air. They dive right into “Halloween,” an eerie, sparse composition about hiding yourself and being willing to do whatever you can to save a failing relationship. “Baby it’s Halloween, and we can be anything.” They then slip away from “Punisher” tracks to the opening song of her 2017 album “Stranger In The Alps,” “Smoke Signals.” The haunting vocals, themes, and bass line continue from the last two songs, the audience swaying along.
The energy rises once again as another storybook unfurls, this time showing a giant UFO poised over a city at night. The opening repetitive strums of “Chinese Satellite” begin, bolstered when the drums come in at the first pre-chorus. It holds a simultaneous tone of hope, frustration, and resignation through a fluid, melancholic sound. The lyrics are about Bridgers’ lack of faith, echoed repeatedly in phrases like “I want to believe.” She explores the realization that she is not “special” and that no one is going to swoop in and “save her” from her life. Yet, at the same time, she expresses a hope that the aforementioned facts are not true, as well as a desire (and inability) to believe in a higher power.
In the final verse of the song (displayed explicitly behind her as a ghost appears beneath the spaceship), she makes references to ghosts and aliens, a repeating theme in her music and general aesthetic. She describes feeling an “impossible” presence in her room late at night and wishes that a UFO would abduct her and take her home to where she belongs.
This sentiment deeply resonates with me, and “Chinese Satellite” remains my favorite song of hers. I exist at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities, including disability, queerness, and transness. Part of my journey towards fully embodying my identity as a chronically ill, trans/(gender)queer, and aromantic person was embracing the alienation I experience from our nondisabled, cishet, and otherwise normative society; in fact, one of the first pieces I made for OutWrite explored this very theme.
This reclamation of my marginalization inspires much of my personal artwork and designs, the subjects of which often center around aliens. Hearing a queer woman I admire reference similar attitudes in her music is incredibly cathartic and emotional for me and feeling her voice surround me in real life only added to those feeliings. Her songs seem to exist in their own world separate from our own. It reminds me of my own strength and security in my personal identity. The song ends in an eruption of sound after the words, “I want to go home,” the ghost engulfed in a tractor beam as it’s taken home to another world.
Halfway through the set, the melancholic tone returns with “Moon Song,” a song about caring for someone who hates themselves and wanting them even when they keep stepping on you. A scene of the moon set behind a woodland scene scattered with bottles takes up the screen behind them. Described as a sequel to “Moon Song,” “Savior Complex” takes up its coattails with open expanses of sound, purposeful acoustic guitar, beautiful violin solos, and the consequences of trying to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Bridgers breaks from “Punisher” again to play “Funeral,” a song from “Stranger In The Alps” about loss and the consuming inevitability of death.
After a somber end to “Funeral” and quieting our cheers, she takes a pause to introduce the next song: “This song is about Marshall. We broke up.” Fast-paced electric guitar and bass drum introduce “ICU” in waves, the entire song ebbing and flowing and building to a climax after the second chorus: “I used to light you up, now I can’t even get you to play the drums,” the drums dropping out for a moment before crashing back in. This song is about her past relationship with her drummer, Marshall Vore, and the devastation of losing their deep friendship after their break up (they’re doing great now, don’t worry). “I don’t know what I want until I fuck it up.” (Attending the concert with a girl I tried dating definitely added to the emotions booming across the theater.)
The sudden end of “ICU” gives way to soft acoustics and drums of “Scott Street,” another song off of “Stranger In The Alps.” It was co-written by Vore and speaks about one of his past manipulative relationships (Bridgers not involved). The theater somehow grows even quieter as the song ends, Bridgers taking center stage under a spotlight for a simple, stripped-down version of “Me & My Dog,” a song she wrote for her band Boygenius (also consisting of Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, who were also touring at the time); it’s a song about Bridgers wanting to escape her anxiety.
As we near the end of the set, there’s a tuning mishap with Vore’s banjo. Harrison Whitford tells us about how stagehand Mark created a homemade board game for the band to play on tour while Mark tunes the instrument; everyone cheers for him. When everyone is set, another pop-up book opens behind them, showing a lonely road in Tennessee and a spilled bag of saltines. On her record, “Graceland Too” came to life with help from Baker and Dacus, but Bridgers’ voice alone does the trick accompanied with Kohavi’s violin, Vore’s banjo, Kirkpatrick’s trumpet, and strong backing vocals.
We can tell the end is finally here as Bridgers introduces her band members to the crowd (met with deserving, hefty cheers). A final book opens up, revealing a simple house on a hill. We can’t help but cheer when the opening chords of “I Know The End” begin. Ironically, this song is about going on tour and wanting nothing more than to be home. She beautifully describes a world falling apart, so much so that “even the burnouts aren’t out here anymore.” We follow her as she narrates driving up the coast to Northern California, screaming out songs she remembers from her childhood, getting sunburned through her windshield, and passing slaughterhouses, strip malls, casinos, and billboards spouting hellfire and brimstone. Her home is going down in flames, but she’ll “find a new place to be from.” “The end is near” welcomes in a crescendo of all the instruments, repeating over and over in a growing frenzy until it breaks down into a scream, the house behind them set aflame. The chaos only grows as we scream along with them, watching the screen fizzle out into color bars as the song fades out into the loudest cheers of the night.
Our cries call her out for an encore, an unexpected cover of Bo Burnham’s song “That Funny Feeling” from his 2021 comedy special “Inside” (turns out he attended the show the next night, so I guess we should call it “Outside”). As if tailor-made for Bridgers, the song lists what gives Burnham feelings of existential dread and hopelessness in our world (i.e. “that funny feeling”); “20,000 years of this, 7 more to go… the gift shop at the gun range, a mass shooting at the mall.” Despite scattered laughter at some funny lyrics, the crowd is nearly silent at the final lines of the last verse “that unapparent summer air in early fall, the quiet comprehending of the ending of it all.” The song and show fades out with an almost hopeful sounding mix of every instrument and voice onstage, and the repeated words “hey, what can you say, we were overdue… but it’ll be over soon, you wait.”
Seeing Phoebe Bridgers live filled me with life and sucked it right out of me. I’m sure it makes me a punisher, but I feel a deep emotional connection with her stories, voice, and musicality; they fill me with such joy. I’m making my own skeleton suit as we speak.
Credits:
Author: Christopher Ikonomou (Xe/He)
Artist: Christopher Ikonomou (Xe/He)
Copy Editor: Bella (She/They)