According to every review that I've read, Phoebe Bridgers is putting in some amazing performances on her current arena tour. But unless you go see the show for yourself, you have to rely on secondhand accounts. Bridgers famously banned phones from those shows, which means there's basically no footage out there.
For instance, we know that she reunited with her boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus at a recent Brooklyn show, but we don't get to watch it happen. We do, however, get to see all three of them perform together in an incredibly cool new live video in A24's Sound Check At Cherry Lane Theater series. The Cherry Lane series combines musicians with buzzy directors, like the combination of Tame Impala and Sean Durkin.
Phoebe Bridgers gave her first real feature film performance alongside Robert Pattinson in Primetime, the great and unnerving new To Catch A Predator film that's in theaters now. Primetime is the feature debut from Lance Oppenheim, the documentary director who also co-directed Nathan Fielder's much-anticipated new Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything, as well as Bridgers' video for "Lost Boys," the lead single from her excellent new album Lost Weekend. Now, Oppenheim has directed her Cherry Lane session, too.
Bridgers' Cherry Lane session opens with her singing a stunning version of "On Video," her song from the Primetime soundtrack, accompanied only by longtime collaborator Ethan Gruska on piano. She's bathed in blue light, next to a wall of tube TVs, and the aesthetic looks just like what Oppenheim brought to Primetime, with its hypnotic and chaotic combination of film stocks. When that song is over, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, both of whom contributed heavily to Lost Weekend, join Bridgers for folky, acoustic takes on her songs "Haunted" and "Lost Boys." (Dacus performs while filming Bridgers on a gigantic video camera.) Their harmonies continue to astonish.
It's less of a random little internet session, more of an art piece. I encourage you to stop whatever you're doing and just let it wash over you for 12 minutes.
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