More about: Phoebe Bridgers

Admit it - there are some gigs where you wish the person next to you would shut up, where you get home and resent their out of tune singing in all your slick video clips. We’ve all been there, but at Phoebe Bridgers’ London leg of her Reunion Tour, it felt like the best, most cathartic choir practice in the world. 

With fans queuing every morning from silly O’Clock, the feeling of excitement around the venue was palpable. Bridgers’ fame is a strange kind of magic - it’s rare to see a singer like Phoebe gain this kind of active hype. Singing sad little songs, people hang on her every word and movement, creating a true cult of fans that seem to grow week on week, bringing rockstar-levels of excitement. And as she steps onto the stage to Disturbed’s ‘Down With Sickness’ - the merch of heavy metal and her soft self should be ironic or silly, but instead its just iconic.

Diving right into ‘Motion Sickness’, everyone clears their throat and prepares. With a tight, perfected band of her long-time collaborators including Marshall Vore and Harrison Whitford, the performance is so slick that the ground can slip into carefree enjoyment. Sounding identical to the recording as Phoebe’s distinctive vocals fill Brixton Academy, everyone gets to bring their own intimate understanding of her work into the space. With her latest album Punisher being one of the first albums released during lockdown, it’s been a true bedroom record, beloved by fans individually and privately during years of isolation. And with the lyrics themselves being full of introspection and deeply personal confession, nothing about the album screams big venue singalong bangers. But phoebe’s fans have made it so.

Moving through the record and scattering cuts from Stranger In The Alps throughout, Phoebe’s fans cling on to unexpected phrasings and scream them back at her like 5000 voices affirming her feelings. An especially special moment comes during ‘Funeral’, a 2017 release that still remains a fan favourite. As she sings ‘I have a friend I call / When I've bored myself to tears’, you can see hands reaching for hands. I cling to my housemate and we allow ourselves the first tears of the set, leaning into the collective experience and the big feelings on a major scale. 

Moving through the sadness and sweetness of tracks like ‘Moon Song’, ‘Saviour Complex’ and the recent ‘Sidelines’ - an outsider would think it’d be a sombre affair. But despite the lyrical content, Phoebe’s show was joy unlike anything I've seen in a while. Fostering a kind of catharsis that is rare, it feels like everyone is finally getting to breathe deeply, drop some weight and sink into the experience. With the whole crowd singing along, guided by Phoebe like a shepherd leading her sad little sheep, we looked to her with admiration, awe and a wholesome kind of love. 

And anyone who thinks it would be a dull experience, clearly doesn’t understand the anger of teenage girls. With the emotional tension building and building, the singing gets louder as we stear towards the finale. Guitars thrashing, tempo uping; the band lock in for the chaos of ‘I Know The End’. And when the cue comes, everyone screams. Its the kind of scream that you just know has been locked in for too long. But when you think about it - when do women ever really get to scream? In a crowd of mostly young women, when do we ever get to kick off and really lose it? When does the world allow us to lose composure in a screaming, howling, throat-hurting, toe-curling way? But Phoebe does. Throwing herself into the crowd and surfing across the noise - this is what makes her special.

Allowing a space where everyone can lose composure, her shows feel like a good therapy appointment. Sharing her most vulnerable thoughts and feelings since 2015, the give and take is amazing. In every applaud, you can see the affirmation sink in, like every show serves as a reminder to phoebe of the power and community in softness. And in turn, her fans get a hand to hold through the heavy stuff. Sharing a set of emotional highs and lows, and then a minute or two to truly let all the feelings out - I leave feeling lighter than I have in a long time. And I hope Phoebe knows how much I appreciate that, I tried to tell her in every overly-loud singalong. 

See photos below from Phoebe Fox:

Issue Four of the Gigwise Print magazine is on pre-order now! Order here.

More about: Phoebe Bridgers