boygenius Reunite in Phoebe Bridgers’ A24 Cherry Lane Session

A24’s Sound Check at Cherry Lane Theatre pairs musicians with filmmakers, and its latest installment gives Phoebe Bridgers a twelve-minute set directed by Lance Oppenheim. The match is not arbitrary. Oppenheim directed her video for “Lost Boys,” the lead single from Lost Weekend, and his feature debut, Primetime, in which Bridgers appears alongside Robert Pattinson, is currently in theaters.

The session opens with “On Video,” a song from the Primetime soundtrack, performed with longtime collaborator Ethan Gruska on piano. Bridgers stands in blue light beside a wall of tube televisions, a set that echoes the film’s shifting, restless use of film stocks.

Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus then join her for acoustic versions of “Haunted” and “Lost Boys.” It is a brief boygenius reunion of a kind audiences could not watch at Bridgers’ arena shows, where phones are banned, and where the trio’s appearance at a recent Brooklyn date circulated only through secondhand accounts. Here the footage exists, and Dacus spends part of it filming Bridgers with an oversized video camera.

Both Baker and Dacus contributed to Lost Weekend, out now on Dead Oceans, which is why these harmonies read as continuation rather than guest spot. The series has placed musicians with directors before; this one holds together as a performance meant to be watched whole.