Album Review: boygenius - 'the record'
Releasing one of the most highly anticipated albums of the year, boygenius’ ‘the record’ hits incredibly hard with topics surrounding lost love, hatred and spite for past lovers, and faking love until you hopefully make it. ‘the record’ covers a lot of love, in so many beautiful and heart wrenching contexts, but most notably it covers the love each member of boygenius has for the other; Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, and Phoebe Bridgers are possibly the love of each other’s lives, and they are shouting it from the rooftops.
With the release of their immensely successful 2018 self-titled EP, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus gave the world a taste of their power and respective talents, achieving critical acclaim with a mere six songs as a supergroup. Since then, boygenius, as a project, seemingly took a back seat as each member ventured into their own already impressive solo careers; releasing albums and touring as they usually would.
But we were still here, and we wanted more. And now, Baker, Dacus and Bridgers have answered the call; releasing their debut album ‘the record’, a mixture of punk themed hard hitters and folk ballads, fuelled by each member’s love for themselves, each other, and lovers who will come and go.
From the calming introductory track ‘Without You Without Them’, something more akin to a melancholic barbershop quartet that lost a member down the line, is the sheer punch that is ‘$20’, a single that is fuelled by indie and punk roots. With layered vocals and harmonies throughout the track flowing through the blunt and powerful guitar and drums, the highlight of this track personally is Dacus’ vocals, and are something to be celebrated. Dacus does an amazing job of grounding a song with her deeper vocals on this track, giving the listener a platform to stand on as Bridgers and Baker’s vocals swill around them, eventually moving into a chaotic climax of Bridgers’ screams. As Baker stated in a Rolling Stone Magazine interview, ‘$20’ is her commentary on the discontent with life one feels at a young age, eventually becoming coherent and forming masses of political opinions of their own within the world (“Pushing the flowers that come up / Into the front of a shotgun / So many hills to die on”).
Moving into the melancholic mind of Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Emily I’m Sorry’ admittedly sounds exactly like any other Phoebe Bridgers track to me, something that could easily have been on either of her albums, but it still acts as a heartfelt track covering the saddest part of love. One where you lose yourself for someone else, gaining behaviours that were never there before; for this, Bridgers is truly sorry, penning down a heartfelt apology to her past lover for all of these things.
‘Emily I’m Sorry’ is a cerebral experience that exposes Bridgers’ want for more emotional intelligence, questioning said intelligence in an attempt to become a better person within relationships. Bridgers has the guts to admit openly that she wasn’t a good partner in this situation, waking up to this realisation and wanting to create a happier story for herself and Emily (“Just take me back to Montreal / I’ll get a real job, you’ll go back to school”), but it’s too late for them. With more accompanying harmonies from Baker and Dacus, that are truly angelic, and swill of haunting, ethereal, horn sounds and dulled out drums, it's easy to see why this track would likely be one of the most popular on the album.
‘the record’ is also heavily inspired by the folk tracks one can find in a 60s playlists, ‘Cool About It’ being a key example of this. This track can only be described as cute, sweet, pretty. It’s a dainty track powered by the acoustic plucking of an acoustic guitar and the vocals of all three members of boygenius; covering the disappointment found in the failings of love, no matter how hard you may want to try for it. ‘Cool About It’ shows the narrator's first attempts at creating love (“Ask you easy questions about work and school / I’m trying to be cool about it, feeling like an absolute fool about it”), venturing through the story of a passionless love, eventually realising that they were merely acting the whole way through. In the lyrics “Once I took your medication to know what it’s like / And now I have to act like I can read your mind” the narrator speaks of the desire to know their lover inside out, but the passion simply won’t materialise. Their hard work hasn’t paid off, and it's time to admit that being with them is harder than not (“I’ll pretend being with you doesn't feel like drowning / Telling you it’s nice to see how good you’re doing / Even though it isn't true”).
This album also touches on the trio’s individual love for one another with ‘Leonard Cohen’, a short but sweet love song amongst friends, where each one’s imperfections makes them all the more loveable in one another’s eyes (“Leonard Cohen once said there’s a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in”).
Closing out the album is a gut-wrenching piano ballad that honestly brought a tear to the eye of a writer who struggles to cry to music most of the time. Calling back to their previous EP by following the same melody as ‘Me & My Dog’, ‘Letter To An Old Poet’ is, lyrically, an extremely sad but beautiful song that watches Bridgers battle the hatred she feels for a past lover. Supported by her bandmates both generally and through the harmonies on this track, Bridgers’ talks of a man who brings her down constantly and lessens her self worth (“You’re not special, you’re evil / You don’t get to tell me to calm down / You make me feel like an equal, but I’m better than you / You should know that”). This song feels like an act of pure self love, taking control of her life and coming to terms with the bad things in this relationship.
It should be noted that if word count weren’t an issue, I would write about ‘the record’ for pages and pages. boygenius have released an incredibly detailed record, rich with lyrical content fueled by the love in their lives, and the want to feel love and to be loved; whether that be romantic or platonic. ‘the record’ is a truly beautiful one, and the love that each member has for one another is as plain as day. Calls and demands answered, boygenius has given the world an album for the ages.
Words by Rae Garvey
