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Wanna hear Phoebe Bridgers’ new album under the stars? This Costa Mesa planetarium has you covered
Phoebe Bridgers plays with her band Boygenius during the 2023 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
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Frazer Harrison
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Getty Images North America
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Next week Phoebe Bridgers fans in Southern California will get an otherworldly way to enjoy her new album ahead of its official release Friday.
And a Costa Mesa institution will enjoy the chance to introduce indie music lovers to what it does beyond astronomy lectures and field trips.
The Orange Coast College Planetarium is one of dozens of planetariums around the world – and the only in Southern California – hosting listening sessions next week for Lost Weekend, one of the year’s most anticipated indie releases and Bridgers’ first solo studio album in six years.
The Pasadena native is not expected at any of the planetarium shows. But that doesn’t matter to her fan base.
Phoebe Bridger fans can listen to her album in the planetarium's 125-seat dome theater.
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Courtesy Orange Coast College Planetarium
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Twelve shows in the 125-seat theater sold out within four hours of going on sale Thursday, according to the planetarium. So staff added 16 more, bringing the total to 28 screenings over four days, Aug. 10 through 13. (At last check, tickets for showings earlier in the day were still available.)
“We have never had an event that was this anticipated,” Rhiannon Graffio, lead speaker and educator at the planetarium.
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Listening to Lost Weekend...at a planetarium
When: Aug. 10–13. Shows are scheduled throughout the afternoon and evening, with both fulldome and laser show experiences.
Where: Orange Coast College Planetarium, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa.
Tickets: $20. Tickets are available through Orange Coast College’s ticketing site.
Phone-free: Phones must be placed in locking Yondr pouches during the listening sessions. Smartwatches, cameras, Meta glasses and other recording
There’s two ways to experience the record from start to finish, which is a little over 50 minutes long.
One is a full-dome show featuring images taken by renowned astrophotographer Babak Tafreshi.
“It's gorgeous,” Graffio said. “There's some that are of the night sky, where you can see the paths of the stars as the Earth rotates, or auroras or lightning.”
The other option is a laser show created by Laser Fantasy, with scenes and storylines moving in time with the music.
Graffio said the planetarium had been approached by Bridgers’ label Dead Oceans to host the shows, which are being presented in partnership with Spotify.
Rhiannon Graffio, a lead speaker at the Orange Coast College Planetarium, has been working with Phoebe Bridgers' label on next week's listening sessions.
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Courtesy Rhiannon Graffio
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The events are strictly phone-free. To prevent album leaks, attendees will have to put their phones in pouches provided by Yondr, a company that works concerts and other events. Smartwatches, and Meta glasses also aren’t allowed.
The Lost Weekend events are the most high-profile but certainly not the planetarium’s first experiment with mixing music and visuals.
The theater regularly hosts laser shows set to music, cycling through different artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé each month while keeping some crowd favorites like Pink Floyd in rotation. Graffio said in the last year KPop Demon Hunters laser shows have been especially popular.
Accommodating the Lost Weekend shows has meant bringing extra staff to handle the weekday crowds at the community planetarium.
But Graffio said there's a big upside to introducing music fans to a place they may never have thought to visit.
“It’s a wonderful experience,” she said. “And most of the shows that we do are also educational in some sense. As cool as the visuals are, they are about the universe and what we know about it.”
And for those who can't make it to the planetarium shows, there's a more traditional route to marking Bridgers' new album. A dozen record stores around Southern California are hosting listening sessions at midnight Friday.
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