In a technology-focused world, Phoebe Bridgers’ The Lost Tour is shifting audience etiquette with the mandated use of Yondr pouches.
Yondr pouches, a lockable pouch for cell phones, are best known for being used in schools. However, they were created with the intention of being used at concerts as well. Bridgers is certainly not the first musician to use Yondr pouches. That title goes to “The Lumineers.”
Despite this, Bridgers’ large-scale tour, coming after a long hiatus, put the phone-free concert concept on the map.
Bridgers’ latest album “Lost Weekend” was released Aug. 14, after a six-year hiatus from solo music, and a three-year hiatus from the supergroup “boygenius.” Considering her first two albums, “Stranger in the Alps” and “Punisher,” are widely beloved by indie music fans, her break effectively built up hype for her return with “Lost Weekend.”
With such excitement and intrigue for what Bridgers would do next, tickets for The Lost Tour sold out within just a few days. For concertgoers, the unusual setup created a large-scale concert experience that is unique in the modern world: a concert without a mass of phone recordings, allowing people to be fully immersed.
When walking into whichever arena the specific tour date is being held at, audience members first scan their digital tickets, as usual, but are then presented with a paper copy of their tickets, printed directly from the ticket scanner.
After this, fans proceed to tables staffed with arena employees ready to administer the Yondr pouches. Each concertgoer must power down their phone and give it to a staff member for it to be locked into a pouch. Importantly, each pouch is equipped with a crossbody strap so that everyone can hold onto their phones throughout the show, just not use them.
Obviously, humanity survived large events for hundreds of years without phones. Yet, it seems in the modern day, many are constantly concerned with safety. That may lead some to feel they need their phone for quick access to emergency services, family membersand the like.
Though this disconnected sensation may be alarming, concert staff members are never far away, and can handle an emergency or unlock a Yondr pouch if necessary.
This immersion is especially interesting with the stylistic choices of The Lost Tour. One might imagine such an intimate concert would avoid eye-catching visuals and focus more on the artist alone, but The Lost Tour did a fantastic job of combining auditory and visual effects for a complete experience.
“The Lost Tour” featured a spacey, electronic theme. During opening act Alex G's set, he occupied the smaller of the two stages, which was ringed by pillars that lit up in a rainbow of light. Mysteriously, during his set, on the larger stage was a dome with a grid on it, reminiscent of an igloo or an alien spaceship.
Once it was time for Bridgers to take the stage, an orb with streams of light shooting out of all sides descended from the ceiling as “The Outside,” the album’s opening track, played. The dome on stage then lifted, revealing Bridgers and her band underneath for “Motion Sickness.”
For the rest of the show, the dome and orb were utilized in a number of surprising ways. The dome lifted up to the wall, allowing images that related to the songs to be projected onto it. Behind the dome was a screen with the appearance of a theater curtain, onto which live footage of Bridgers was projected.
As for the orb, Bridgers moved to the smaller stage for some of her more emotionally intimate songs. Shockingly, during the explosive, instrumental end of “Lost Weekend,” thousands of intense rainbow lights poured out of the orb, covering the entire arena.
Moments like those leave an impact on audiences, especially without the ability to record or photograph them. The heightened engagement created by a lack of phones perhaps lets fans be more in the moment, better committing the show to memory.
A particularly novel tradition that is emerging among “The Lost Tour” viewers is bringing a small sketchbook to the concert and sketching the stage before the show begins to have a record of what the show looked like in the moment.
Though that is heartwarming, some are less willing to comply. One audience member somehow snuck a recording device into the concert, leaking the footage online in a video that is seemingly no longer posted. Such behavior could be read as disrespectful in the context of “The Lost Weekend,” as the album is primarily about Bridgers’ father’s death.
At the Columbus, Ohio, show, Bridgers explained that she wished for a phone-free concert to avoid being posted online if she were to have a breakdown onstage due to the album’s sensitive content. Aside from this, it adds to the concert experience to participate in a concert as a community, with fans swaying arms during “Scott Street” and doing the wave before the show begins.
Although not every artist is as focused on creating intimate concert experiences, perhaps the success of The Lost Tour will inspire other artists to approach performing from a phone-free perspective as well.
