Kevin Bronson on December 17th, 2017

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“Jesus Christ, I’m so blue all the time,” Phoebe Bridgers sings in “Funeral,” not whining or moaning, but in a way that suggests she’s upbraiding herself for being easy prey.

It is that subtlety that makes the 23-year-old’s debut “Stranger in the Alps” a special album. There is sad music — the kind that wallows in self-pity (and, often, over-production) and suffocates from mawkishness — and there is Bridgers’ melancholy. Her clever but plainspoken narratives address the inevitability of sadness, dissecting the triggers in a voice that only sounds innocent.

That she started Saturday night’s sold-out show at Lodge Room with “Funeral,” a song about singing at the services for a friend only a year her senior, was about as bold as it gets. Her hour-plus concert in the darkened old room (a former Masonic Lodge built in 1923, still sporting its trap doors, cherry wood paneling and hand-painted murals) started with chills and moist eyes and ended with the crowd chanting “Phoebe! Phoebe! Phoebe,” and one guy wolf-whistling his approval. It was Jackson Browne.

Bridgers was backed by an all-star cast including keyboardist Ethan Gruska, co-producer (with Tony Berg) of “Stranger in the Alps” and author of his own remarkable 2017 album, “Slowmotionary.” Harrison Whitford and Christian Lee Hutson added their own deft touches, as did Bridgers’ longtime collaborator, drummer Marshall Vore. They gave Bridgers’ songs a luminescence on a night she chose not to give a straight recitation of the songs as they appear on the album.

Conor Oberst appeared onstage to duet on “Would You Rather” (he lends his vocals on the album as well) and stayed to join in on “Christmas Song,” a sad yuletide meditation by the Omaha band McCarthy Trenching. For a moment, the long strands of tinsel hanging from the Lodge Room’s chandeliers didn’t feel frivolous. But only for a moment.

The pace quickened only for “Motion Sickness,” the highlight of the album, a galloping rocker that Bridgers introduced by saying, “Here’s one I wrote about Ryan Adams” (who produced an early version of her single “Killer”). #ThanksRyanAdams.

“Scott Street” put you squarely in Echo Park, having an uncomfortable conversation with an old friend that ends in a half-hearted “Don’t be a stranger.” “Smoke Signals” and “Killer” were gloriously glacial, and “Demi Moore” — “a song about sexting,” she explained — exacted every ounce of resolve in the phrase “I don’t wanna be stoned anymore.”

For the encore, it was just Bridgers and Gruska on Mark Kozelek’s “You Missed My Heart,” nine verses of poetry that faded gently into the night, bringing the show right back to where it started: the crowd, congratulating themselves on being easy prey.

* Updated to restore a paragraph about “Motion Sickness” that was inadvertently deleted.

Photos by Andie Mills