Talking About How I’m Not Supposed to Talk About Phoebe Bridgers’ New Album
The indie-folk singer-songwriter pulled off a phones-free tour and arena show featuring new material with no leaks or big spoilers.
For the last month, Phoebe Bridgers has been moseying across the country, playing a string of pop-up shows in college towns and out-of-the-way cities with histories of UFO sightings. These intimate concerts marked the premiere of her first new solo material since 2020’s Punisher and her first real public appearance in two years, but attendance came with one particular condition. Fans were asked to lock their phones in magnetic Yondr pouches and submit to being in the moment, present with their own thoughts and surroundings instead of focused on capturing picture-perfect proof that they were there.
Logistically, this sounds easy enough to achieve in venues holding several hundred fans, but I wondered how the no-phones plan would work with 20,000 people moving through Madison Square Garden for the micro-tour’s grand finale on Thursday night (June 4). Surprisingly well, it turns out. It’s a little strange to see security guards scouring the crowd like snipers, looking for fans with hidden cameras and recorders, occasionally questioning them while Phoebe Bridgers sings about death like 30 feet away. PB herself was on high alert: "If any of you figured out how to stick an Apple Watch up your ass or whatever to record, just please don’t put it on the internet,” she deadpanned from the stage. “I’m trusting you.”
You’d think the banning of not just devices, but also pens and pencils at these shows would be the most extreme measure against spoilers, but nope. Moderators of the Phoebe Bridgers subreddit were reportedly asked by Bridgers’ camp to delete or edit comments containing lyrics of her new songs, as remembered by tour attendees. There’s plenty of self-policing on the platform now, with disclaimers like “without being taboo” or “not trying to get deleted” preceding vague impressions of the material. No one wants to be that fan who crosses the line; it’s hard to imagine an actual leak being promoted within the community.
At the same time, the industry plays into fan-detective levels of obsession by arranging album rollouts that ask to be “solved” like puzzles, through breadcrumbed clues dropped by the artist on social media and beyond. (“Play the game, but only by our rules,” essentially.) This is happening with Phoebe’s new album in a somewhat literal way: Every Yondr bag used on the tour contained a scrap of cardstock printed with a single piece of a larger painting, that when combined together form… a tour poster? Clues to the album title? Theories abound on Reddit, where you can see the finished puzzle.
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