The Boys Are Back With 'The Record' and They’re Here to Make Us Cry
Boygenius is back with yet another soul-crushing album that will have you crying in your childhood bedroom or yelling and jumping in open fields. The album is a wave of folk and rock mixed songs that encapsulates the relationships between the 3 singer-songwriters, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker. The trio shares the love they have for one another within each track allowing their listeners to feel like they’re a part of it.
Before the album was released I had the pleasure of attending a pre-album listening party at one of my favorite record stores, Shugas Records. Where I was surrounded by 200 Boygenius listeners all eager to get a listen of an album we all knew we were going to love. What started off as a room of strangers ended with a room of tears, hugs and clapping. It was truly a holy sight to be a part of and an energy I had never felt.
The Record is a beautiful ode to the emotional, spiritual love that each singer has for each other and they’re able to interpret that through raw and vulnerable lyrics. Each track has a way of feeling like an emotion you’ve felt too deeply and or it invokes something new and unfamiliar that hits you in all the right places. “Without You Without Them” is sitting in the warm sun of a backyard you're all too familiar with or bathing in moonlight after a long day of loving someone with every bone in your body. Dacus has a beautiful way of welcoming us into this love story – this beautifully curated friendship. It almost feels like they’re in the room with you with the way they sing it like a capella.
When listening to the album you can run into cowboys, arsonists, poets and Leonard Cohen and maybe some imaginary friends. The metaphors used through each song really add a poetic and youthful energy that allows listeners to connect to them as they are or when they were young and laying in the arms of their mother or father. In “Revolution 0” a song sung mostly by Bridgers herself, you’re hit with nostalgia and the comforting harmonies of Dacus and Baker. What seems like a sad song ends feeling like an “I’m going to be okay, you’re going to be okay,” Boygenius has an incredible way of introducing pain through a new garden bed that’s being planted to help you heal.
“Satanist” and “$20” is a whirlwind of Bakers guitar percussion and the kind of screaming that everyone holds in too often. What I love the most about Boygenius is the space they create to allow their listeners to scream, to let out everything they’re holding in. If Bridgers is screaming then so are we. “Satanist” is chaotic, it’s messy, and Baker sings each word like it’s her last. It feels like the high you get before a breakdown or the adrenaline you get after kissing someone for the first time. The heavy guitars turn to slow breaths at the end and it feels like you can finally breathe.
The Record really breaks down the male ego whilst showing the kind of feminine love that most love songs don’t interpret. In their song “We’re in love” Dacus epitomizes the trio's relationship with every word and every lyric. “If you rewrite your life, may I still play a part,” is such a powerful way of showing how crucial they are to each other and how important it is to find the kind of love that makes you feel like you can find each other in every new life. In “Leonard Cohen” Dacus sings about Bridgers and the way she loves her for being her and for telling her stories even when she ends up driving the wrong way and adding an extra hour to their trip. But she also says “I’m not an old man having an…writing horny poetry,” this line alone expresses what feminine love is, it’s loving someone because you love them for their mistakes and listening to their favorite song because it’s their favorite, it’s loving them to love them, not to romanticize or create an image of them in your head. It’s real, honest and an absolute tear-jerker.
“Once I took your medication to know what it’s like” this line alone really sold this album for me. “Cool About It” seems folky and sweet but it’s all the words you couldn’t say, all the words you didn’t have or couldn’t find when you needed them. It’s wishing you could understand because you love them and want to help. It's hoping you can take a little bit of their pain to make their shoulders feel lighter. “Anti-Curse” is painful. Baker sings about being young and making mistakes that make it hard to breathe. It’s about trying your best and accepting that it wasn’t even if it hurts. It feels like Baker is telling Bridgers and Dacus that she’s messed up before and hopes they’ll love her for it anyway.
“Emily I’m Sorry,” “True Blue,” and “Not Strong Enough” are all songs that the indie supergroup allowed us to here a couple weeks in advance but none of them prepared me for the turmoil of emotion that the album was going to cause when listening to The Record for the first time in that record shop. The album is what it feels like to be understood and it’s a great warmth to know others love the way you love or that you can and will find the love that they sing about. Their friendship radiates through each word sung by each artist and you can really see and feel the emotional connection they’ve all created.
“Letter To An Old Poet” is what had everyone in that record shop on the floor, in tears, distraught and in a frenzy. The line “I wanna be happy” sung by Bridgers is a mirror of “I wanna be emaciated” in “Me & My Dog.” It’s a full circle moment of finally realizing that you’re ready to be happy, you’re healing from what broke you. It was the perfect way of ending the album, the perfect way of showing the waves and stages of love and melancholy. What killed everyone the most was the way the song lingered after they harmonize to the word “waiting” it feels like the song never really ends. It represents the feeling of knowing you’ll wait for them no matter how long it takes because you love them that much.
Overall The Record felt like a burning house you wanna live in. Bridgers, Dacus and Baker show us their relationship through their haunting yet beautiful voices and they punch us where it hurts and even when you’re drowning from the tears and the words you wished you said you know you’ll come up for air and you know you’ll scream about it later.