Five years is a long time, long enough for a band to wander, reunite, and find themselves on a different plane. Such is the case of
boygenius
, the indie supergroup of
Phoebe Bridgers
,
Lucy Dacus
, and
Julien Baker
. When the trio first joined forces in 2018, it was to bash out an EP over the course of four days, releasing the results on
Matador
. Everything about
The Record
, the full-length debut delivered a half-decade later, is more deliberate.
Boygenius
spent a month cutting
, releasing it on
Interscope
to great fanfare in March 2023. The leap to the majors certainly reflects how the profiles of
Dacus
Baker
, and especially
Bridgers
have been elevated since the
EP, a rise aided by each of the three releasing strong, distinctive albums in its wake. What's remarkable about
is how these three idiosyncratic songwriters consciously decide to subsume their quirks within a group voice. Individual traits haven't been erased so much as they've been sanded so they can fit neatly together. The unified front gives
shape and heft, qualities apparent from its twin openers: "Without You Without Them" highlights their spectral harmonies, while "$20" drives home an offset riff that's quintessentially 1990s. Much of
feels like a conscious throwback to the spirit of 1993, blending the dreamier and noisier aspects of alt-rock, feeling equally at home with the bittersweet strums of "Leonard Cohen" and the walloping hooks of "Satanist," not to mention how "True Blue" and "Not Strong Enough" land squarely in the middle of this spectrum. Collectively,
feels heftier and hookier than
do on their own, and this collective instinct towards immediacy pays great dividends: it's bracing to hear such introspective singer/songwriters embrace the pleasures of a united front. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine