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The folk-pop It Girl’s phone-free show delivered craft mellowness and sincerity to an arena-sized crowd
When Phoebe Bridgers’s concert at Scotiabank Arena began on Thursday evening, an orb pulsing with lights hovered over the satellite stage at one end of the arena while a dome dominated the mainstage across the floor.
The dome lifted, revealing Bridgers and her nine-piece band on a circular stage as if they were a room service dinner. The 32-year-old Californian and the others were dressed all in black. The lighting was diffuse; the hazy aesthetic was black and white.
“I have emotional motion sickness,” the folk-pop It Girl sang on the galloping opening number, her soprano voice breathy and sincere. “Somebody roll the windows down. ” The line figuratively describes her songwriting process. The young woman to my left whipped out a pad of paper to sketch what she saw.
There are no phones allowed on Bridgers’s Lost Tour. Only memories record the events. Two hours later, the mostly female audience would look back on the concert as a simpler and more intimate time. The tour is in support of Bridgers’s third solo album, Lost Weekend .
Early in the first of two Toronto concerts, she addressed her big crowd with a “long time no see” greeting. She performed in 2023 as one third of the indie-rock supergroup Boygenius at what is now known as the RBC Amphitheatre. A year prior she played the now-defunct RBC Echo Beach venue on her own. Bridgers typically writes and sings about love and loss.
The death of her father is one of the themes to the new album. Her earnest lyrics are at turns conversational and diaristic; the chords and tempos that carry them are built to sweep the listener away emotionally. The ability to craft mellowness and relatable melancholy into arena-sized singalongs is a gift.
Bridgers has a way with imagery: “Hiding in the bathroom like Shelley Duvall” and “Dancing ourselves clean late New Year’s Eve” on The Governor’s Waltz , a dream in 3/4 time. On Lost Boys , Bridgers rhymed “This machine is killing me” with “I pretended it was make-believe. ” Perhaps a comment on the disillusion of fame. Before she sang it, a fan had yelled out that this was their first concert.
“Wow,” the four-time Grammy winner replied. “That’s a lot of responsibility for me. ” Heavy is the pop star’s head that wears the crown, but Bridgers is faring well. The new album received universally rave reviews upon release this summer.
Her reputation is solid; she says and does the right things. Not only did she charge a pittance for tickets to a surprise show at New York’s Madison Square Garden in June, but proceeds went to a charity that pays immigration bonds for people detained by ICE.
On the other hand, the celebrity-stocked wedding of Taylor Swift and football player Travis Kelce one month later at the same venue likely cost tens of millions of dollars. Ostentatious and thirsty is not a good look. More recently, Swift released four new tracks on The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore , an expanded version of the pop queen’s weak album from 2025. Critics suggested the move was a money grab or done for pre-Grammy exposure.
Swift is taking hits, as is Ed Sheeran, who was criticized for his apolitical stance when his promoter removed rapper Macklemore as the tour’s opening act for expressing pro-Palestine beliefs on stage. Boston -singing country-pop star Stella Lefty was lampooned on Saturday Night Live over allegations of songwriting plagiarism. So, a rough few weeks for the charting class. Indie music sensation Bridgers, however, cruises unassailed.
On the satellite stage, where she appeared alone or with her string section, she endeared herself to the audience by saying most of her favourite American songwriters were Canadian-born. She mentioned her late father was a fan of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Before performing the solo acoustic Still Standing , Bridgers said while she had a “weird” relationship with her father, his death flooded her with an empathy for him that in turn made her closer to her fans.
“I love you,” she said. Captured in a cone of light from above, Bridgers sang about her dad: “You left your suitcase by the bed, like you needed to know you could go whenever you wanted. ” The night before Bridgers’s concert, I caught a set by the Toronto singer-songwriter Hayden Desser. He performed a song he rarely performed because he thought it was too earnest.
Too earnest . There’s no such thing any more. Phoebe Bridgers performs Vancouver’s Rogers Arena on Oct. 24.
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