“The Record” Album Review
Hit Indie-rock group Boygenius’ latest album, “The Record”, is a stunning collection of raw musical magic and lyrical genius.
By Hannah Siegel
If Boygenius (2018) is the moon, glittering and mesmerizing on every surface, then The Record (2023) is the sun — suffusing renewal and warmth in every strum. There’s something intensely reparative about Bridgers’, Daucus’, and Baker’s album — an album breathing in, then out.
The most potent moment of the album comes in its final song, “Letter to an Old Poet,” which directly interpolates one of the band’s most masterful and
beloved songs, “Me & My Dog”. Immortalized by the troupe’s 2018 performance at Brooklyn Steel — doubtless a timestamp in music history— “Me & My Dog” cries out with Bridgers’ falsetto leading a precise harmony: “I wanna be emanciated/I wanna hear one song/without thinking of you.” From 2023, Bridgers and co. reprise: “I wanna be happy/ I think I’m ready/to walk into my room without lookin’ for you.” The group’s
harmonies work as well as they always have, reaching truly transcendent peaks with Daucus’ honey-smooth timbre, Julien’s sharply-tuned alto, and Bridgers’ versatile, whisper-esque croon. Their blend feels like the brush on a shoulder, sunlight filtered through a glass. It’s the music of the spheres, spoken to lyrics in “Cool About It” like “But we don’t have to talk about it/I can walk you home and practice method acting.”
“Leonard Cohen” is deliciously distorted, with prominent guitar and Daucus on lead vocals. “Without You, Without Them” is slightly grainy, acapella, and opens the album’s door like a morning meditation. “Give me everything you’ve got,/ I’ll take what I can get…” “Speak to me…” “Talk to me…” Bridgers, Daucus, and Baker invoke, one after the other. Three muses, calling up a song.
“Cool About It” is genuinely a cold glass on a blistering summer day — you can feel the. warm air sticking to the sides. There’s a lovely country twang, accentuated by the banjo and finger-plucked guitar. Meanwhile, the vocals melt over the track à la Simon and Garfunkel in Bridge Over Troubled Water. A cool breeze rushes over it. It’s almost unspeakably tender, and perhaps the heartbreaker of the album. “I’ll pretend being with you doesn’t feel like drowning/ telling you it’s nice to see you and how good you’re doing/ even though we know it isn’t true.”
Of course, “Revolution 0” gives the song a run for its money: “I don’t wanna die,” Bridgers whispers — “that’s a lie.” Gentle, with melodies that dip and soar, “Revolution 0” is just the right kind of restrained. “I used to think that if I/just closed my eyes/I would disappear” Bridgers’ sings, before we hear the telltale gasp of guitar strings being released. The song feels as if another verse is coming — but it doesn’t.
Three of the record’s singles — “$20,” “Emily, I’m Sorry,” and “True Blue” form a triptych of each of the bands’ frontmen. “$20” is Julien’s Appalachian childhood death- wish liberation runaway fantasy; “Emily, I’m Sorry” is a Phoebe Bridgers instant classic — a mournful peek into the turbulence of intimacy loved and lost, gentle as a bird’s wing — and “True Blue” is Daucus’ treatise to human touch, friendship, and love. For her, divinity is in the mundane: “Now you’re moving in/breaking a sweat on your upper lip/gettin’ pissed about humidity/and the leaky faucet.” This triptych is vivified by the music video “the film,” directed by Kristen Stewart. The three stars appear in isolated frames, each one opening like the menu of a video game, before collapsing, after a climactic make out session, into one unified frame. Finally — the film breathes — the world set right.
There are echoes of the group’s blood pact in several of the songs’ lyrics — the tight-shouldered bond Boygenius has written of in the past. “Ate a floor of saltines on your floor and I knew/Whatever she wants” becomes “I just want to know/ who broke/ your nose/figure out where they live/so I can kick their teeth in.”
Well, if that ain’t love — what the fuck is?
The album is a true godsend to music lovers, and a love letter Boygenius aficionados everywhere. The album’s sense of callback is uncanny — not only in the album’s obvious moments, like Baker’s coy nod to “Salt in the Wound,” (“Salt in my lungs,” she sings, in “Anti-Curse, with a pulsating bass that beckons onward, and onward), but in its atmosphere. Fans of Daucus will swoon over the album’s Lucy-isms — most clearly visible through her lyrical prowess and enchanting voice. After all, this is the legend that penned “Night Shift,” “Thumbs,” and “Marlon Brando.” Fans of Baker will relish in her classic vocal cries, bursting over some of the greatest guitar playing this industry has to offer. Finally, pharbz will delight in that swirling, raw magic that’s become indelible to Bridgers’ artistic signature. Listening to the record is listening to — and back to — each of these artists’ greatest hits, all while meeting the horizon of something new.
It’s a gift of a listening experience, and a guaranteed classic. What a treat for Boygenius fans everywhere, who have been pleading for the supergroup’s return since about 2018.
It feels good to be known so well. Siri? Play the record.
