THREE days after releasing her third album, Lost Weekend, Phoebe Bridgers staged its first UK live outing in a setting that felt more bedroom than church: a throw-covered sofa, lava lamps, and a TV looping the bouncing DVD logo inside London’s Union Chapel.

The show, played to a 900-strong crowd, marked Bridgers’ first solo UK date since 2022. Fans had their phones sealed in magnetic pouches — the same setup planned for her arena run later this year — and sat in the pews clutching CDs and T-shirts bearing the new album artwork.

Bridgers opened with a solo run at breakout track Motion Sickness, her voice ringing around the chapel’s domed ceiling, before bringing out two bandmates: Nick White and Christian Lee Hutson. Even with the room in full reverent hush, she kept puncturing the solemnity, urging the crowd to scream and sing along — and, at one point, deadpanning: “God’s watching – fuckin’ freak.”

Lost Weekend dominated the set. Bridgers has said the record centres on the grief she feels for her father, who died in 2023, and described the writing process as something she “really did scrape from the bottom of my guts.” Though the album reportedly leans into crackling ambience and vocoder textures, the Union Chapel performance pulled it apart into a sparse arrangement: two guitars, keys, harmonica, occasional percussion, and “ghostly” effects.

That bareness sharpened the emotional edges. Still Standing landed as an unflinching look at her “complicated” relationship with her dad, while The Governor’s Waltz carried lyrics that appear to reflect on the end of her engagement to Paul Mescal. When Bridgers dropped to a near-whisper, the room’s chill felt collective.

And she didn’t keep it quiet for long. Percussion stomped up into the rafters, vocal effects warped her delivery, and Hutson’s harmonica on Kill Me was played for menace. During the title track’s climax, UV light hit Bridgers’ blond bob and the planets hanging behind her, turning the chapel into something eerie — a surreal glow for an album that treats grief as both foggy and painfully, vividly bright.