---

Phoebe Bridgers’ sad, meditative music sounds best on days where the air is wet with rain and the clouds rumble. But it still sounded very good at Redmond’s Marymoor Park Tuesday night, where her 8:15 p.m. set was ushered in by an obnoxiously nice summer day that wrapped up with a pink-and-orange sunset. Bridgers was here in support of Punisher (2020), the sophomore album that whisked her from an on-the-come-up singer-songwriter to full-fledged household name with appearances on Saturday Night Live and high-profile collaborations with the likes of Taylor Swift newly in her arsenal. (Bridgers is at Marymoor tonight, too, though that show, like this one, is sold out.)

I didn’t poll my fellow concertgoers, but I’m sure I and most of the people in this majority hiply dressed 20-something crowd have similar relationships to Punisher. Released in June 2020, it became consoling in the dark, scary days of early quarantine, inadvertently given an even-greater resonance than it likely would have in an alternate timeline where the world’s fate hadn’t been hanging in the balance and we hadn’t been spending inordinate amounts of time alone, lost in our heads. 

Read the rest of the piece on 425.