boygenius: Baker Bridgers Dacus LLC

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.

I'm enjoying the production much more - much fuller and more nuanced. I've got what I assume is a shitty vinyl pressing of the EP, but even with that the production always sounded thin to me.

i'm very slightly disappointed in the album as I don't think any song on it is as strong as Me and My Dog or Stay Down, but I've only listened to it under non ideal circumstances

this sounded nice on the first real spring day of the year. most bridges-related works have one spectacular song and then a bunch of solid ones, and on this one it's "satanist." tho i do still really like "not strong enough"

The only song I dislike is "We're in Love."

"Letter to an Old Poet" holy shit

I feel like this is about as strong as the EP rather than noticeably stronger or weaker.

A key difference, which Carl Wilson's review picks up on, is that Baker and Dacus offer much happier songs than they were writing circa five years ago. I experience this almost with visceral relief in the case of Baker given how relentlessly self-critical Little Oblivions was (albeit often very amusingly so). But I wonder if some people will come away from this album missing the emotional intensity that is generated by these artists' past tendency to return to the well of their own darkness. In particular Dacus' campfire ballads here, while not a new style for her, basically inhabit one end of her stylistic spectrum.

(Bridgers performing "Letter to an Old Poet" which is practically a do-over of "Me and My Dog", could almost be meta-commentary on struggling to move on from where she was 5 years ago, or appearing to struggle, but wanting to - especially given it arrives at the very end)

Dacus is such a good lyricist.

"Cool About It" is such a condensed encapsulation of their various lyrical styles and performative characters, I can't think of lines more typical of Baker, Dacus and Bridgers respectively than "Wishing you were kind enough to be cruel about it", "I came prepared for absolution if you would only ask / so I take some offense when you say 'no regrets'", and "Once I took your medication just to know what it was like / and now I have to act like I can't read your mind".

This is good and looking forward to repeat listens.

Coincidentally, that’s what Taylor Swift advising doing today (via IG Stories) – play it on repeat (that’s quite an endorsement)!

is 'Satanist' the best song ever?

Absolutely loving Satanist here too.

True Blue is my other personal standout on first few listens.

True blue is fantastic and the album is good but I’m not too sure about most of the acoustic tracks (except cool about it).

I had to give myself time to adequately absorb the tracks I didn't know from prerelease, and basically I think it's a really good album that's a few songs short of great. I agree that a few of the folkier tracks don't register very strongly —– "Revolution" and "We're in Love" in particular — and I like them best with a bit of a beat behind them. That said, "Emily I'm Sorry" is one of my favorite Bridgers songs period, solo or otherwise, and the other pre-release tracks plus "Satanist," "Anti-Curse," and "Cool About It" are all top-notch.

"Cool About It" is such a condensed encapsulation of their various lyrical styles and performative characters, I can't think of lines more typical of Baker, Dacus and Bridgers respectively than "Wishing you were kind enough to be cruel about it", "I came prepared for absolution if you would only ask / so I take some offense when you say 'no regrets'", and "Once I took your medication just to know what it was like / and now I have to act like I can't read your mind".

superbly otm, my favorite song here

Put another way, the things that each needs to let go of in order to move on are very much in character and carefully (though not obviously so) counterposed: Baker needs to let go of her idealisation of her ex’s goodness; Dacus, her desire for fair determination as to where blame lies; Bridgers, her over-identification with her ex’s flaws.

did we ever figure out who all's in the band? Jay Som on the left here, I believe (correct me if wrong) ... the person next to the drummer looks very familiar but I can't quite place them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPYc7VC6M-Q

very confusingly they have two bassists in that performance?

the live band there is apparently jay som on bass, madden klass on drums, sarah goldstone (she plays with dacus) on keys, and tiana ohara on bass. one of the bassists moves around instruments i think for other songs?

Am very much here for the extended version of 'True Blue' that will inevitably appear.

Nice acoustic version of Not Strong Enough from one of the Taylor Swift Nashville shows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aiL6c9Qi98

They're playing here this summer at some weird festival that both cost hundreds of dollars and also sold out but at the same time seems like it's on the cusp of being cancelled (literally) for permitting issues.

Re:Set festival? that's their own thing too I believe, as in, they are principal organizers. Three day thing, luckily youu could get single day tickets (which I did for Palo Alto; still a bit expensive considering I don't care at all about the other people playing the same day as them)

If I understand correctly, here in Chicago they put tickets on sale before they had the requisite permits, and the permit issue still hasn't been resolved.

Also, aiui, the neighbors reallllllly don't want it. They just submitted another petition to have it blocked. Apparently largely the same group that has been working to chase festivals out of Douglass Park, they successfully stopped two other festivals at Douglass (Lyrical Lemonade, Heatwave).

If they sold tickets prior to permits, I'm sure that doesn't help their case much either. Doesn't look good with it less than two months away.

really like their new Gretsch signature guitar, based on the Broadcaster but without a Bigsby and has a trapeze bridge instead

https://gretschguitars.com/boygenius

My favorite of their three lovable Grammy speeches last night. (This was the third one, so they'd already got most of the thank-yous out of the way.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-YIAw1Arrk

did they play "Layla" every time someone went to the stage?!

or just boygenius!?

I think the cues were pegged to the categories (so, "Rock Song" gets "Layla") — but I didn't pay enough attention to say for sure.

Wish at least one of those had been televised. (Or, I mean, part of the main broadcast. I guess those pre-show awards were streamed somewhere?)

xp

It made me think of Bridgers' great Clapton diss, tho.

It's pretty awesome to see how massive they've become and how I'm sure whatever they do next they'll individually be stars in their own right even more.

gotta believe PB will move up to arenas now and Dacus / Baker to, like, 5000+ theaters and amphitheaters, right?

Makes me glad to have seen Baker and Dacus in smallish venues pre-boygenius. Not yet had the chance to see Bridgers.

Neat tribute in today's Double Jeopardy round.