I wanna live at the Holiday Inn: Phoebe Bridgers’ “Smoke Signals”

The single most powerful moment I’ve ever had with a piece of live music was the first time I heard “Smoke Signals.”

I’d scored a couple of tickets to go see Conor Oberst at the Grass Valley Center for the Arts in May of 2017 and I took my friend Tony, with whom I’d grown up learning to write music. We’re unapologetic lovers of Bright Eyes and Oberst as a whole, but we had no idea who Bridgers was, and had never been to the arty foothill town of Grass Valley, CA.

We found a seat about 9 theatre rows back and I looked up Bridgers’ name on my phone. All I remember is that her URL was phoebefuckingbridgers.com, which I took as a good sign for whatever reason. She strolled out quietly and started into the ambient electric four chord swirl that kicks off “Smoke Signals.”

Verse one is a nice bit of rural scene setting, introducing us to the singer and her travel companion. By the third line we get: “Singing Ace of Spaces when Lemmy died, but nothing’s changed, LA’s alright.”

With that, even if doesn’t seem like much in print, every shred of attention-deficit retreated from my body and I was nowhere else but in my seat, ready to pay full attention to a person I hadn’t heard of 15 minutes earlier. Without even stealing a glance to my right, I could tell that my friend was fully locked into the same space. Here’s the third verse in the form of a paragraph:

“I wanna live at the Holiday Inn, where somebody else makes the bed. We’ll watch TV while the lights in the street put all the stars to death. It’s been on my mind since Bowie died, just checking out to hide from life. All of our problems, I’m gonna solve them, with you riding shotgun, speeding ’cause fuck the cops.”

Bridgers’ album wasn’t out yet and Bowie had died a year earlier. These sentences are perfectly devastating, especially after being lulled by the few minutes of looping chords that lead up to it. Not only had we no preparation, but we also had no expectations. We were pretty sure we’d miss the opener because we stopped on the way to eat some tacos in Sacramento.

I think Tony cried a some. I didn’t quite, but I felt that song in my blood. I was entirely stunned by it in a way that happens less frequently as I get older and other pressing responsibilities fight for my energy.

Verse four plays you out, meaning it also plays you into the next 10 songs on her first album. And then the collaborative projects that have followed.

I wrote about one of the Better Oblivion Community Center songs today. Follow on Twitter for a song or two a week, among other stuff.