In a nearly two-hour concert that often played out like a dream, Phoebe Bridgers hit Little Caesars Arena on Saturday (Oct. 3) with a cathartic show that left some fans in tears of overwhelmed emotion.
Detroit was a midway stop on the North American leg of the Lost Tour, the acclaimed indie pop-rocker’s most ambitious headlining excursion to date. Saturday’s sold-out show was a five-star triumph bolstered by the fact it was a phone-free affair.
With gorgeous lighting to match the gauzy, impressionistic sounds, Bridgers arrived with a precisely thought-out vision that showed why she’s become one of the decade’s most intriguing and important artists.
The otherwise immaculate show featured a couple of lyrical stumbles — including one that prompted
a chuckling Bridgers to restart her night-capping “Scott Street” — along with a briefly scary moment that caused her to halt “Haunted” when she noticed a concertgoer down front had collapsed. (Medical personnel quickly arrived, and the singer resumed after getting reassurance the fan was safe.)
Three takeaways from Bridgers’ night in Detroit:
‘The Lost Weekend’ prevailed
Bridgers’ third solo album, “The Lost Weekend,” is a meditation on loss, grief and new love inspired in part by the 2022 death of her father, with whom she shared an on-again, off-again relationship. Saturday, the album’s songs constituted well over half of the evening’s set.
Lyrically, the new record is familiar Phoebe Bridgers: pointed, poetic, vividly sketched. Musically, it expands on her earlier work — denser and more avant garde while simultaneously more aggressively pop.
Backed by a six-piece band and a string trio, Bridgers gave the new material its arena-sized due, delivering bouncy melody via “Lost Boys,” sprinkling stardust on songs such as “The Governor’s Waltz” and delivering a hypnotic pulse with the likes of “I Can’t Wait.”
A satellite stage on the arena floor was the night’s emotional haven, including a mid-show stretch where the album’s ethereal title track and the beautifully aching “Still Standing” were capped by “As Above,” with the understated vocalist kicking into soaring mode.
Elsewhere, the insta-crowd-pleaser “Kyoto” and a panoramic, searing “I Know the End” closed the regular set, but not before Bridgers served up a relative rarity: a solo acoustic rendition of “Emily I’m Sorry” from her band Boygenius.
It was a mesmerizing night
Saturday marked Bridgers’ Detroit arena debut and her first show here since 2021, when she played the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre amid the early reemergence from the pandemic shutdown.
She rose to the occasion Saturday, bringing a production that suited the ambient musical aesthetic, with just two props, an overhead orb and main-stage dome, as focal points. Ahead of the show, soft celestial tones inside the dimly lit arena had set the mood, promising something immersive to come.
The dome — part planetarium, part projection screen — was gently raised and lowered throughout, while the B-stage orb sprayed shards of light like a cosmic Tesla coil. The full experience was both intimate and dazzling.
Phones locked into pouches = fans locked in
Like all stops on the Lost Tour, concertgoers Saturday were required to lock away their mobile devices in Yondr pouches as they headed into the venue. As we’ve learned with Yondr trendsetters like Jack White, it’s an initially disorienting but ultimately rewarding move, allowing for the sort of artist-audience communion that concerts were meant to cultivate in the first place.
In the packed venue ahead of Bridgers’ performance, the arena-wide hum of conversation was conspicuous — with no screens to distract, fans were left to chatter. At least one young woman was spotted occupying her time with a book.
At show of all genres, cell phone flashlights have largely replaced lighters as concertgoers’ slow-jam visual of choice. But at LCA Saturday, the old-school Bics were out for numbers such as “Moon Song,” “Graceland Too” and “Scott Street.”
“It makes it feel way more personal, and it makes it so much easier to stand up here and sing about this stuff,” Bridgers told the crowd ahead of the quiet and delicate “Still Standing.”
The lack of mobile devices only strengthened the emotional bond in both directions. As the house lights came up for the closing stretch of “Scott Street,” an entire LCA was filled with bodies in unison, arms swaying as one.
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Phoebe Bridgers enthralls a sold-out Little Caesars Arena: 3 takeaways
