As if a six-year hiatus weren’t an exciting enough reason to get hype for Phoebe Bridgers’ third album, Lost Weekend, the visionary artist designed a series of worldwide listening parties accompanied by none other than… a laser light show!

Spanning more than 40 planetariums across the globe, the experience fused the album’s majestic soundscape with a grand, kaleidoscopic spectacle for the eyes. It’s an ambitious undertaking that highlights the detail and intimacy of Bridgers’ long-awaited work while deepening the catharsis of its grandest moments.

Lost Weekend - Phoebe Bridgers — Lost Weekend – Phoebe Bridgers

Bridgers helped design two separate planetarium shows: A laser light show designed by Laser Fantasy, and a show containing a series of images of constellations and star-filled skies from across the globe designed by photographer Babek Tafreshi. The show ran for five days, from August 10 to 15, making it an exclusive and must-see proposition for the most dedicated pharbs and phantoms.The choice of a planetarium is unique, yet fitting, matching the album’s large-scale sound while reinforcing the soft 1980’s fantasy aesthetic seen in the album’s promotional material.

In a word, the experience was dazzling. Bridgers’ music resonated incredibly through planetarium speakers, and the lights were equally enthralling. The variety of the visuals was impressive, each song featuring its own set of light designs that – save for one poignant visual – paired with the music in their own striking way. Fluorescent neon swirls, kaleidoscopic hoops, and intergalactic star patterns were all brought to life across the massive planetarium screen.

The use of space was particularly effective; most visuals presented themselves in the middle of the planetarium screen only to expand in the music’s most bombastic moments. “Haunted,” for example, featured a kaleidoscopic series of wavy lines that flowed left to right like a broadening river, increasing in velocity and bursting into bright rainbow flashes during the song’s chorus. “Kill Me” featured a large red and blue pattern which spun and expanded independently of the music, soon joined by small fluorescent hoops that grew and shrank across the screen along with the beat.

Every couple of songs showcased more recognizable images in short animated vignettes. One such track was “The Governor’s Waltz,” which portrayed a series of medieval images: A sun setting behind a castle, swans swimming in a stream, and a large magic mirror, bolstering the music’s plucked, magical aesthetic. “Never Going Back!” displayed a story of a bus driving through a series of US landmarks from the Hollywood sign to Mt. Rushmore. It’s an adventurous image that directly juxtaposes the bittersweet voicemail of Bridgers’ deceased father – a story of an artist being on tour and wishing they had more time to spend with their loved ones.

The show’s most poignant vignette occurred during both “Lost Weekend” and “Lost Weekend (Reprise),” showcasing a (bizarrely) beautiful love story between two planets. The screen displayed two cosmic entities floating through space: A red square-shaped planet composed of a series of cubes and a blue spherical planet composed of spheres and circles. In the first iteration of the song, the planets meet in orbit, hesitate to make contact, then slowly, almost sensually collide into one another. Each planet’s loose ever-morphing shapes crawl onto the other’s surface as they become one: A sweet sentiment of two contrasting entities finding solace and love despite their stark differences.

“I can’t see any stars in the sky”: Phoebe Bridgers Comes Back to Earth on ‘Lost Weekend’

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The reprise brought about a return of this story, first displaying the planets in their united form. After a moment of stillness, the planets begin to draw apart from one another in a motion as desolate and cold as the music. Thus begins a slow, heart wrenching separation of the two entities – red cubes return to red, blue spheres to blue, as the planets drift apart into their own lonely region of space. The surreal connection comes to an end, concluding the experience with a vast absence of color and an inexplicably tragic emotional weight.

The notion of a laser show is as brave and creative as the music it accompanies. With an album as expansive as Lost Weekend, bright visuals add a beautiful layer of depth to the album’s exploration of humanity, giving depth and – quite literally – color to a journey bursting with life.

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