Live Review: Phoebe Bridgers, Pool Shop, Christian Lee Hutson

“I have emotional motion sickness/Somebody roll the windows down.” At first glance, it’s easy to read these lyrics as a cry for help. However, Motion Sickness is Bridgers’ most upbeat song, and it doesn’t seem like she’s singing from the passenger seat. Instead, the words feel more like an imperative call to confront difficult feelings and embrace the experience. And just like that, Bridgers takes a country music trope from the world of blue jeans and pickup trucks and turns it into something vital. It’s especially relevant this evening, as this is Bridgers’ first performance since The New York Times published allegations of abuse against American singer-songwriter Ryan Adams, the ostensible subject of the song. This is obviously a complicated time for Bridgers, who has been forthright in interviews about her previous relationship with the singer, although she doesn’t flinch away from these difficult memories; when she walks on stage later in the night, Disturbed’s Down With The Sickness blares from the speakers. 

In the meantime, Christian Lee Hutson seems similarly prepared for his own emotional exegesis. He’s committed to a dark sweater despite Brisbane’s current heatwave, seated at the front of the stage under a warm spotlight. He plays a beaten acoustic guitar during songs like I Just Can’t Fucking Do It Anymore and I Have To Keep You Down, offering brief anecdotes between songs. Hutson has written and recorded with Bridgers and currently plays guitar in her band, so it’s not hard to hear the same reflective and humorous qualities that characterise Bridgers’ work. In fact, Bridgers has been stepping into the producer role recently, and has been working with Hutson on recording his new songs, according to an interview published by Stereogum late last year. 

After the quiet sounds from Hutson, Brisbane band Pool Shop come on like a tidal wave. Their hazy dream-pop exists somewhere between the noise-rock of shoegaze predecessors The Jesus & Mary Chain and the new wave bops of The Psychedelic Furs; they’re the type of band one could imagine playing The Bang Bang Bar in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Led by Jamiee Fryer, who also plays in Major Leagues with guitarist Vlada Edirippulige, Pool Shop performs as a five-piece these days, with Peter Bernoth, Luke Pallier, and Dougal Morrison contributing to the band’s washed-out wall of sound. Singles Can You Dream and How Long sound great, although it’s Fryer’s new songs that are the most exciting – apparently we’ll have the chance to hear more of them soon. 

As mentioned previously, Phoebe Bridgers’ arrival on stage emphasises that she is indeed down with the sickness. She’s joined by Hutson on guitar while her frequent songwriting partner Marshall Vore sits behind the drums, all three of them wearing black. As the heavy metal song fades out, a hush falls across the crowd. There’s fairy lights wound around the microphone stands, and as Bridgers’ sings Smoke Signals, the darkness dissipates: “I buried a hatchet,” she sings, “It’s coming up lavender.”

The next song is Funeral. So perhaps it’s not wholly accurate to describe the darkness as ‘dissipating’. However, Bridgers’ music is unapologetically sad: “That's just how I feel/Always have and I always will,” she sings. Like Smoke Signals, and most of the songs tonight, Funeral is from Bridgers’ debut album, Stranger In The Alps – the title inspired by the censored-for-TV version of The Big Lebowski. This balancing act between despair and optimism is one that Bridgers’ explores throughout her music: “We talk until we think we might just kill ourselves/But then we laugh until it disappears.”

“Let’s open this pit up,” Bridgers says after she finishes the song. The crowd laughs. “This next one’s still a bummer, but it’s faster.” She moves the capo on her black acoustic guitar so far down the neck that it sounds more like a mandolin for Georgia (“With my back to the shoreline, I dreamt that he drowned”) and explains that Demi Moore is about her frustration that she can’t smoke weed: “I don't wanna be stoned anymore.” Somewhere in New York, Ezra Koenig is wondering how he didn’t think of that one first.

It’s Conor Oberst’s birthday today, so Bridgers’ dedicates Chesapeake – from the pair’s recent collaborative effort, Better Oblivion Community Center – to the Bright Eyes singer. She says Oberst was tripping on mushrooms during the writing session for the song while her and Hutson were working with him, which perhaps explains why this song record feels particularly related to Bridgers’ experience: “I was all covered in sound,” she sings, “When you asked me to turn it down… Can you hear it now?” The pairing of this song with Killer, her major label debut on Ryan Adams’ PAX AM record label, seems significant this evening. 

Before she does turn up the sound, Bridgers strips the music back even further, inviting Vore out from behind the drums and his impressive collection of miscellaneous percussive instruments to join her for a duet of Gillian Welch’s Everything Is Free: “She’s the only person on earth who could write a folk song about Napster.” Bridgers makes one small change to the lyrics, cursing for emphasis as she sings, “If there’s something you wanna hear/Fucking sing it yourself.” Somehow, despite the intentional kiss-off, it feels inspirational.

Bridgers says that this has been a particularly hard year for her. “My childhood dog died,” she explains. “I’m going to do a song from one of my other bands that I wrote for him.” Anyone in the room with a beating heart is wiping tears from their eyes as Bridgers performs a haunting acoustic version of Me & My Dog. The new song afterwards features more canine imagery. It’s already one of her best songs yet.

“I’m okay,” she says, and the crowd breathes a collective sigh of relief. Somehow, in this context, Scott Street feels like a lighter moment. “Do you feel ashamed/When you hear my name?” she sings, smiling at her ex-boyfriend Vore behind the drums. His cue is right after she sings “I asked you: ‘How is playing drums?’” and the theatre of it is hilarious and heartwarming.

There’s only one song left, it’s inevitable. “This one is kind of weird for me right now,” she says. “It’s about a really bad person who I felt really conflicted about.” She encourages the audience to call out abusive and predatory behaviour, instead of remaining complicit. “Because, yeah, that’s how this shit… it just goes on for way too long because enablers around them keep it going for like 15 fucking years.” Her last few words are drowned out by applause.

Finally, Motion Sickness is one hell of a song. “I hate you for what you did/And I miss you like a little kid,” she sings. It’s a stripped-back arrangement, the jaunty country shuffle gone. “There are no words in the English language/I could scream to drown you out,” Bridgers laments. Vore holds off on the drums until the bridge, the final nail in the coffin: “You said when you met me you were bored.” The band build into the final chorus before Bridgers dives headlong into the longest note imaginable: “I want to know what would happen/If I surrender to the sound.” It keeps going. And going. And going. It’s the sound of surrendering to oneself, not anyone else.

If we weren’t already standing, this would be a standing ovation. We keep clapping, not necessarily expecting anything more, but it’s hard to know what else to do with ourselves. Bridgers comes back out. “I don’t really have many options,” she says. She plays a new song. It’s called Phoebe Bridgers.