boygenius: Baker Bridgers Dacus LLC

Just giving them their own thread, in the hopes they'll be a periodically going thing. Here's a good song off the new album, out in March:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQH1snAzwKE

Previous discussion from Bridgers thread.

no boygenius thread I gather but FULL ALBUM coming

― abcfsk, Friday, January 13, 2023 8:35 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Every time I see this thread title my mind posits a very lame non-existent Seinfeld but

― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Friday, January 13, 2023 9:00 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Bit

― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Friday, January 13, 2023 9:00 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I like how this thread title evokes a Seinfeld-ish stand-up bit...

“First there was Courtney Barnett... she was pretty good! Like if Sheryl Crow had a few Nirvana CDs and a reliable weed connection! Then there was Soccer Mommy... when I first heard her, I thought Liz Phair was trying to sneak back into the industry under an assumed name! And now this Phoebe lady... what’s the deal??”

― it's AG in your faaaace.... (morrisp), Sunday, November 15, 2020 7:00 PM (two years ago)

― Vexatious litigant (morrisp), Friday, January 13, 2023 9:09 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

There appears to be a song on this record titled "Leonard Cohen"

― Paul Ponzi, Friday, January 13, 2023 9:36 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Bring it on, the EP is glorious, and each one of them has gotten better since then. Phoebe is opening for Taylor Swift, right? She's gonna get a lot of new fans this year.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Friday, January 13, 2023 9:54 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

it should be cute but it's actually annoying. this may be because i am a 46-year-old member of the Phoebe Bridgers subreddit.
this reminds me of a friend of mine telling me he got annoyed at the boygenius show he went to because there were so many young people and I was like "dude, I too wound up being a 50 year old greyhair at a phoebe bridgers concert and that is just something you have to accept"

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Friday, January 13, 2023 11:01 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Phoebe is opening for Taylor Swift, right?
That has got to be either the best or the worst opening slot in the world.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, January 13, 2023 11:02 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

she'll do great but if you were annoyed by her fans now, just wait until she picks up more swifties

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Friday, January 13, 2023 11:06 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I wish her luck convincing those people that she is more than the only thing standing between them and Taylor.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, January 13, 2023 11:07 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

man, I think they took it down, but there was a boygenius pitchfork live set from brooklyn on youtube for a few years that I watched about a thousand times, the version of Me and My Dog in it is one of my favorite live performances ever I think.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Friday, January 13, 2023 11:09 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Interscope, huh? I guess they outgrew Matador. I wonder if Julien and Lucy are still there as solo artists.

(Old Matador BBS interests die hard.)

― ⓓⓡ (Johnny Fever), Saturday, January 14, 2023 6:23 AM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

the pitchfork live session is def now gone from youtube, I wonder if that's because of the band changing labels or something...or maybe they're going to release that session in some other way. I hope it comes back, it's something else. there are a few audience shot videos of the same show but they're not as good obviously

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Saturday, January 14, 2023 5:07 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

phoebe's set that preceeded theirs does appear to still be online though

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Saturday, January 14, 2023 7:36 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Genuinely excited for the album. The EP is magnificent.

― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Sunday, January 15, 2023 6:45 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yep, love the EP and optimistic that they’ll all bring good material for the album.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, January 15, 2023 8:11 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Heard her on a Sirius XM radio show playing lots of melancholy rock ballads by Big Star and others and she was enthusing about Alex Chilton from Box Tops days to Big Star and solo

― curmudgeon, Monday, January 16, 2023 5:23 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

they sound fucking amazing together, once again

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, January 18, 2023 5:17 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Three tracks (including the above) on Spotify. All lovely but True Blue stands out as a Dacus masterclass.

― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Wednesday, January 18, 2023 5:35 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I like them all, "$20" best because I always like when Baker rocks out a little. Hope there's at least a bit more of that on the album.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, January 18, 2023 9:35 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

mightily looking forward to this. Great job on the thread title. That's all.

that's the real reason I wanted to start the thread tbh

threadstarter of the year 2023, the die is cast

evident from “$20” that julien baker is writing the pedro the lion records for the kids of today

The rare effort where I like them together more than separately.

'emily i'm sorry' is basically a whole song that sounds like the glorious layered vocals on 'i would do anything' from the ep. extraordinary.

A

https://i.discogs.com/24fC9VzkW_2MEqtx0Ez-LGXE5SVtyDQadxuSriSEAQk/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:599/w:599/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEzOTUz/NzMtMTM1NTY3MTU3/MS02NTU5LmpwZWc.jpeg

for our times

the glorious layered vocals on 'i would do anything' from the ep.

do you mean "graceland too" from punisher?

all these songs are very good in their own way, love the range they have all together

I was hoping the thread title accurately reflected the name of the album ;_;

all three of the songs on this ep rule. can't wait for the album.

do you mean "graceland too" from punisher?

ha yes, that's what I meant, which I realized about 20 minutes after posting that but figured whatever.

lol my dad (who will be 79 this year) just sent me and my siblings a link to the boygenius WFUV performance and said, "I like this quite a bit - pretty ambient, also very melodic." Dad otm.

I love this EP, spent all afternoon playing it.

evident from “$20” that julien baker is writing the pedro the lion records for the kids of today

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 18 January 2023 23:37 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Feel like Little Oblivions was in truth a superlative emo album.

average indie group act number 345963468753846239486523474293673249678342596732948673429867239846983246376456348653487something

Not as caustic as usual.

I love these songs and it reminded me of how much I loved the prior EP and that in turn got me thinking about how fascinating Baker, Bridgers and Dacus are as a group, the parallels and divergences between them make it feel like such a fantasy football type concept.

Like, Baker is such a gut punch, five shots of gin neat songwriter and performer, totally immersing you and holding you under the surface of her caustic self-assassinations. And Dacus is... not superior to that, not trying to be cerebral, not even particularly together per se, but such a wise and omniscient narrator including because she's the forgiving but unforgetting, like the kind of close friend you'd ask to write the big speech for your milestone birthday or wedding because you know they'd be unsparing but spot-on. And then Bridgers is like the perfect midpoint between those two spaces, always negotiating the distance between your fucked-up-ness and hers, and so sharply observing of both poles on that continuum. And that flows through to their music and performances: between Baker's wracked, claustrophobic presentness and Dacus's warm, smooth clarity of hindsight is Bridgers' throbbing spectrality, the moment when the present just begins to slip into the past, your awareness of it a sign that it's already passing.

who sings "$20"?

I love the random HOW LONG'S THAT CHEVY BEEN ON CINDERBLOCKS

Tim F otm about their relative strengths and artistic personas, they balance each other in interesting ways.

That's Baker singing lead on $20 right? With Dacus and then Bridgers coming in.

Yes. Baker sings first, if that helps.

mama told me that it don't run
on wishes but that i should have fun
pushing the flowers that come up
into the front of a shotgun
so many hills to die on

“$20” doesn’t really sound like anything Baker has done before, right? I feel like it was definitely worked up from the three of them jamming. Whereas “Emily I’m Sorry” and “True Blue” could both be songs which Bridgers and Dacus respectively brought to the sessions almost fully-formed and then the trio augmented.

That's my take too.

Yeah "$20" def feels more like a collaboration. Hope the album has more of that.

well yes the instrumentation and backing vocals, and the outro I guess, but verses sound very julien baker to me

even through the somewhat upbeat riff her voice and melodic sense reach for my tear ducts

It definitely still feels very julien baker, just a modified version of baker that might not have emerged in a different context.

"Souvenir" on the previous EP was like that too (whereas "Stay Down" feels like a song she brought to the session).

The other thing I like thinking about with this trio is how much their songs are apt to mutate in this context.

I think Dacus's songs are the most unyielding in a particular sense - less so on "True Blue" (which just feels like Dacus through and through, and I love it for that), but definitely on "Bite The Hand" and "Salt In The Wound" (where the most memorable moment in a field of memorable moments is Baker wailing along to "I'm gnashing my teeth like a child of Cain / if this is a prison, I'm willing to buy my own chain") it's like the songs go as far as they possibly can to take the benefit of the trio environment, but they still end up sounding like Dacus songs. But the flipside of that is that the Dacus songs on the 2018 EP sound more like songs from 2021's Home Video than they do like songs from the contemporaneous Historian, as if her songwriting is some form of metal that just absorbs the strength of anything that is thrown at it, and then redeploys that strength afterwards.

Bridgers' songwriting is predisposed to work in the Boygenius context - she already likes multitracking her vocals, so the further refraction of the harmonies just feels like an extension of her existing predilections - such that she can kind of give over her songs to the band context comfortable in the knowledge that whatever emerges still could have dropped into one of her albums without comment.

Baker's songs are the ones where it's like, "okay, this is either a Baker song or a Boygenius song" is a decision that needs to be made at the outset, perhaps because of how much she fills up the space of her songwriting with her personality on her own songs. Making space for others has to necessitate a different approach.

you really have great ears Tim F

alright, officially excited to hear this album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIX_ouNJsTs

Calling it now: album of the year.

I love this song. I love how the last line of the verses is also the first line of the choruses. I love how it is the most comprehensive blending of their songwriting and performance impulses yet. I love that the three artists currently operating who are most adept at creating a vibe of standing outside yourself and being able to expertly chronicle your flaws but also having no idea how to start unpicking the bad stitches in the mess of a cross-stitch you have made… found eachother and formed a band.

That video does more to make Phoebe Bridgers seem like a fun normal human rather than a intimidatingly skilled songwriter / cool kid / budding celebrity / ice queen than anything she's ever done, I think.

Also I'm obsessed with Julien's behavior on the roller coaster at :53-1:08

otm and otm

what a beautiful song

big fan of the sheryl crow tune too wonder if there's a slight inspiration from the vh1 storytellers stevie nicks interaction given the joyous touring video

They were at the annual Tibet benefit at Carnegie Hall last night and unveiled another new song, "Cool About It."

Great song, even if these are the four best songs on the album that would be a good album.

Bought tickets for one of the UK shows today - going with my daughter who is a megafan; the EP is huge in our lockdown mythos. Ethel Cain supporting, which is pretty great.

“I don’t know why I am not strong enough to be your man / I lied, I am, just lowering your expectations”

otm

I tried, I can't
Stop staring at the ceiling fan and
Spinning out about things that haven't happened

I've tipped over into the "this song gives me chills" zone

Almost as fun as the song itself is imagining them sitting around thinking up all these rejoinders to the Sheryl tune.

here's my tiny and pointless quibble: i wish they had repeated "go home alone" at the end one more time and kept the music going to accommodate it.

otherwise, no notes!

Good profile
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/24/indie-supergroup-boygenius-phoebe-bridgers-lucy-dacus-julien-baker-stuff-of-life

Sold!

There’s no mistaking those individual voices. But the power of boygenius is how something weird, unpredictable, and slightly dangerous happens when these three musical minds meld. All over The Record, they prove they’re a band that can do it all, hitting peaks together that can’t be reached any other way.

…

All over The Record, they keep recombining their individual styles into a different kind of chemistry for each song. That’s why they transcend any kind of “supergroup” cliché. After all, supergroups are a dime a dozen compared to actual great bands. And boygenius leave no doubt about where they stand.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/boygenius-the-record-1234704024

supergroups are a dime a dozen compared to actual great bands?

not sure i buy that.

Depends what you mean by "supergroup" I suppose. Just this week I learned of the existence of the Winery Dogs, who are allegedly a "supergroup" because they include a guy who used to be in Dream Theater and a guy who was briefly in both Poison and Mr. Big.

But I get what he's saying, rhetorical excess aside. boygenius feels like a band.

i agree with that. maybe i am too generous with the word "great," also

Is that Rob S’s review tipsy is referring to?

'tis.

nice piece on Stereogum too, if you can wade thru the ads.

Something about the way Sheffield leans into his enthusiasms so credulously makes me reflexively suspicious, but in this case I really want to believe.

I like that he picks up the switch up to the arrangement for the second verse of “Not Strong Enough”, though I had assumed it was intended to be a reference to The Cure rather than New Order.

I'd be more skeptical if we weren't already four songs to the good. Sometimes you just have those albums where everyone is like, yup. Looking forward to finding out.

My good people

This album

I keep checking a certain site for a download.

I ordered the album this morning.

it's good but i'm not blown away or anything, which is how i generally feel about their solo work

I'll have to listen to this later in the morning after I get some sleep - I could barely stay awake through the quiet ones that loaded up the back half and it sounded like there were some beautiful sentiments expressed in those lyrics - but I really liked a big chunk of this, particularly the more uptempo numbers like "Satanist," which may be my favorite track.

"You think you're a good person cuz you won't punch me in the stomach."

god, “satanist”

i am so hyped for the next julien baker record

*listens to “satanist” on repeat* the core, the heart music… desaparecidos… pedro the lion

Oh god, 'Letter to an Old Poet'.

"Satanist" is like "Some Kinda Love": every line startles me.