Will it ever not feel a little invasive to see Phoebe Bridgers live? I know it’s a silly reaction to have — no one’s forcing her to tour or practice her particular brand of exorcism-esque songwriting — but the instinct nonetheless hovered when I saw her on a balmy night in 2022 in Redmond and also at her moving show at Climate Pledge Arena on Friday.

The singer-songwriter is touring her latest album, Lost Weekend, another collection of beautifully sung songs that sound like purged secrets. Much has changed for the 32-year-old since when she last was in the Seattle area. On her previous album, 2020’s Punisher, Bridgers became an unexpected, immediately influential phenomenon, her tender-to-the-touch but darkly humorous style turned unusually resonant, even comforting, by lockdown’s isolation and dread. (Punisher was released in June of that year.) But it also skyrocketed her to the kind of media-appearance-heavy fame that engendered tabloid and toxic fan scrutiny that unsettled her. One particularly damaging incident — being papped with her then-new boyfriend, comedian Bo Burnham, en route to her father’s wake and seeing a large division of her fans overlook her grief so that they could admonish her supposed insensitivity toward her recent ex, actor Paul Mescal — was instrumental to her dramatically limiting her social-media presence and agreed-to public engagements over the last few years.

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Header photo by Matt Grubb