2023

Everyone is searching for the truth. Drawing the boundaries between what is known to be real, or unreal, is a central tenant of our human experience. Call it the “meaning of life,” or more basically, how to give yourself a sense of form within a shifting 70–90 year psychedelic experience (if you’re one of the lucky ones). Working to discover ourselves, or to make sense of the anchors that define our perspectives and desires is foundational, unavoidable. There’s much to consider: where we live, who we love, why we love them, what we lose, why we fight, what we have, who has wronged us, what we do in response or reaction to all of the above and all that’s unnamed, etcetera, etcetera. It’s all interwoven, and at times, impossible to plot linearly. After all, infinite glory is messy. What we experience can often present in a circular fashion, even if there’s the appearance of forward momentum. There’s also the notion that we are entitled to know the central truths about our lives, because effectively, these truths are the sum of who we are. The ledger of our experience is long but it bends from womb to tomb. Moreover, how we compile the ledger matters. The lifetime of facts and feelings we accumulate may be clear and sharp on the page, but how they order themselves, within ourselves, is the real mystery we’re compelled to chase.

Fitting, then, that boygenius’ the record unapologetically hurls itself towards this mystery with three-part harmony: “Give me everything you’ve got / I’ll take what I can get / I want to hear your story / And be a part of it…” The opener “Without You Without Them” positions the record as a series of songs and stories in relation to ourselves and others, an album that sighs with dreamy ambition and a world weariness that comes from survival. Nothing exists in a vacuum and no one survives without scars. Across the record’s 42 minutes you can feel the connective tissue of Julien Baker’s fiery righteousness, Phoebe Bridgers’ gothic waltzes, and Lucy Dacus’ flowery haymakers, all stretching, pulling, and pushing towards the sublime. It’s no secret boygenius stands on the shoulders of the geniuses that came before—titans like Fiona Apple, Kim and Kelley Deal, Joni Mitchell, Mitski, and Angel Olsen — and the record honors that lineage by marrying the resiliency of those trailblazers with the fearlessness and sincerity of the group’s respective solo projects. The results are masterful, the genius evident: balancing somnambulant reflection with soaring melodies and twitchy electronics. It’s an album that reveals more about itself the more you spin it, inviting you to trace the map to a place a friend of a friend once told you about — somewhere just out of reach because you had to be there. In a way, the record exists as an emotional travelogue disguised as an art-rock album, detailing how the search for truth compels us to reach past our limits and explore the vastness of possibility.

As it turns out, possibility begins on the road with bad ideas and limited resources. “$20” fires out of the gate with boygenius’ buzzy take on power-pop, falling somewhere in between Veruca Salt’s abrasion and that dog.’s Casio-laden sweetness. Baker and Bridgers take us through a mad dash road trip to Reno — through arsonist territory, T-bird graveyards, and broken Chevys — relishing in the twisted delight of making it through one more day with next to nothing. By the time the swirling bridge hits, and the stutter-stop drumming holds their orbital guitar against counterpoint vocals, it’s clear the plea for $20 isn’t just for cheap thrills. It’s life changing, the difference between your last meal and a tank of gas. As their collective voices climb, boygenius contemplates looking for a way to extend their escape from complacency, to make your own luck with the deck stacked against you — because of course, you can’t take it with you.

It’s easy to be all about it, which makes the somber downshift into “Emily I’m Sorry” all the more impactful. Based around Bridgers’ underwater strums and shadowy drumming, “Emily…” explores how desperate living has its limits. Things are great when they break your way, but when it doesn’t you’re often stuck in a liminal space — holding nightmares in silence, wide-awake and spiraling, daring people to prove how wrong you are. As Bridgers and company note, people often oblige and your world shrinks: “Emily, I’m sorry, I just / Make it up / as I go along / And I can feel myself becoming / Someone only you could want…” Be it Montreal, or anywhere in the world, that kind of spite can chill you to the bone, even over something as simple as arguing over the North Star. On “Emily…” the ending apology serves as a small way to protect what little warmth survives, because nobody truly knows what they’re doing. It’s a theme boygenius returns to throughout the album as Dacus later sings over the liquid guitar chimes of “True Blue”: “When you don’t know who you are / You fuck around and find out...” On the record, boygenius share a great many instances where “finding out” is unavoidable.

Love is a lot like that, often taking us in the opposite direction before revealing its center. “Leonard Cohen” takes this idea literally, a plaintive folk ballad in the vein of Joan Baez and Sibylle Baier that starts off so focused on sharing a favorite song that it steers Dacus an hour in the wrong direction on the freeway. As she circles back, you can feel her excitement sparkle over a dusty acoustic guitar — undercutting male fantasies about romanticism and horny poetry — discovering something more authentic. Dacus shows how the mistakes we make can bring a kind of sweetness through mutual over-correction, that the other person is worth the swerve and embarrassment from coming on too strong (“You said, ‘I might like you less now that you know me so well’ / I might like you less now that you know me so well…”). Some relationships are like that as they begin to bloom and the song resolves with her flittering voice landing on tenderness and wonder: “I never thought you’d happen to me…”

There are several surprise reveals about love on the record, sometimes from opposite ends of the spectrum. On “True Blue” the group offers a sweeping ballad that washes away calamity to cultivate something strong and durable (“But it feels good to be known so well / I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself / I remember who I am when I’m with you / Your love is tough, your love is tried and true-blue…”). Against gossamer tones and keyboard squiggles, Dacus invites listeners to dream of a kind of connected openness that’s not only reassuring, but healing. Elsewhere, “Anti-Curse” finds Baker living at the center of the storm, beating back the waves of inevitable death. Inspired by Baker’s near-drowning experience, the song honors the seismic importance of that event and conjures hope in the darkest timeline. Against Baker’s signature wail and crashing guitar swells, “Anti-Curse” flips the narrative much like the group’s cover art, showing that reaching out may help pull us towards something bigger than ourselves (or even a blessing).

Of course, vulnerability has its limits. The world depicted on the record is a harsh one, full of people and con men who are hostile to the kind of openness we desire. “Revolution 0” and “Letter To A Poet” alchemize the group’s quiet bitterness into “enough is enough” violence that’s concerned more with ending something toxic than exacting equity. Bridgers takes the lead on both, her whisper silk voice calling out any number of interchangeable abusers that the group has coyly chosen not to name but whom still cast a shadow over their larger collective story (“You’re not special, you’re evil / You don’t get to tell me to calm down / You made me feel like an equal / But I’m better than you / And you should know that by now…”). Don’t let the soft piano and nimble acoustics fool you. These songs hit hard. They are direct. They quietly rage against the self-policing and imposter sabotage that operate as common fixtures in our lives. They address the violence we often choose to internalize.

“Cool About It” exposes this violence front and center, a plucky banjo stringing together three trapdoor portraits of people who sell themselves out for the comfort of others. By the time Bridgers’ sings about taking someone else’s medication, to force feed a sort of telepathic empathy, it’s clear the real toxicity is when we deflect and tip-toe around those who simply expect us to overextend: “But we don’t have to talk about it / I can walk you home and practice method acting / I’ll pretend bein’ with you doesn’t feel like drowning / Tellin’ you it’s nice to see how good you’re doing / Even though we know it isn’t true…” On “Cool About It,” boygenius effectively ask whether that kind of silence is something to take pride in, to protect as part of our journey. Their answer surprises no one.

With this, a question of identity begins to emerge as the record explores how wrestling with our sense of self is more fluid than initially realized. Put another way, maybe it’s not your choices that define you, but rather, how you understand your values in relation to others. “Satanist” splits the difference between the kind of 90s alternative bounce the Deal sisters made famous and the driving muscle found on Mitski’s Bury Me At Makeout Creek. The trio take turns asking who they want to be for someone else — someone that mortgages their future for short term comfort, someone who reads theory but cosplays direct action, or someone who is too sincere to consider the endless void as anything other than uninteresting — and predictably, none of the masks fit. As the song climbs towards the clouds, the back half slows to a glacial pace as boygenius contemplate continental drift away from each other, that values can only bridge the distance between us when we aren’t operating in our own worlds.

Ultimately, the record’s central point is that we try very hard to be the best version of ourselves for others in the hope they will see us for who we are. The tragedy, however, is that we are woefully unprepared to handle and manage that desire. Reciprocity isn’t a given. People are messy, ourselves included, and wanting to put our best selves into the world, for those who truly deserve it, is not always straightforward. We often feel inadequate, like we could and should be more. “Not Strong Enough” is the group’s opus, the signature boygenius statement about wanting to be there for someone and feeling like there’s no way you could possibly show up in the right way. It’s all here: Bridgers’ paralysis over small details like resetting the kitchen clocks, Baker’s attempted muscle car escape from disappointment while blasting “Boys Don’t Cry,” and Dacus disassociating towards the past while ignoring the present. Everything shimmers on this song, buoyed by a motorik pace and impressionistic reverb, but what really resonates is how the group undercuts the hollowness of all this self-loathing. There’s a lot of masculine pressure to be perfect in this world (“I don’t know why I am / The way I am / Not strong enough to be your man / I lied, I am / Just lowering your expectations…”) but on “Not Strong Enough,” boygenius present that maybe the illusion of perfection, the obsession with that god complex, isn’t something we should preserve. Maybe it’s not worth valuing. Maybe these are expectations that are better left in the dust as we drag race through the canyon, because we are, in fact, enough.

Nadine Gordimer once said: “The truth isn’t always beauty but the hunger for it is.” With the record, boygenius don’t arrive at an objective truth or a neat resolution. The facts and feelings may be clear but their personal arrangement always leaves some mess or mystery. Depending on who you talk to, there is no objective truth. Maybe that’s always the point. boygenius’ desire for pursuing life on their own terms, “on the record,” creates something richer than a final answer — something magnetic, unique, and powerful. The desire for understanding, for love, for more, these are all catalysts for change, attempts to reveal who we are even if the results are more unanswered questions. Still, there’s always something to discover. So if you can’t reach the truth, if what is known can only be experienced through vulnerable proximity, at least you have the path you took to get there. You may not be able to take it with you but no one can take it away. Anything is possible in this timeline, and if you really think about it, that’s where the real genius rests.

In addition to the record, here are my other favorite releases from 2023:

• Anohni and the Johnsons | My Back was the Bridge for You to Cross (Secretly Canadian)
• The Beaches | Blame My Ex (AWAL)
• blink-182 | One More Time… (Viking Wizard Eyes)
• boygenius | the record (Interscope)
• Bully | Lucky for You (Sub Pop)
• The Chemical Brothers | For That Beautiful Feeling (EMI / Virgin)
• Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist | Voir Dire (Tan Cressida / ALC Records / Gala Music)
• Feist | Multitudes (Interscope)
• Fiddlehead | Death is Nothing to Us (Run For Cover)
• Full of Hell & Nothing | When No Birds Sang (Closed Casket Activities)
• Greg Mendez | Greg Mendez (Forged Artifacts)
• HEALTH | Rat Wars (Loma Vista)
• Hotline TNT | Cartwheel (Third Man)
• Indigo De Souza | All of This Will End (Saddle Creek)
• Jungle | Volcano (Caiola Records / AWAL)
• Kelela | Raven (Warp)
• Lana Del Rey | Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (Polydor / Interscope)
• Metallica | 72 Seasons (Blackened)
• The Men | New York City (Fuzz Club Records)
• Mitski | The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We (Dead Oceans)
• MSPAINT | Post-American (Convulse Records)
• The National | Laugh Track (4AD)
• Origami Angel | The Brightest Days (Counter Intuitive)
• Ratboys | The Window (Topshelf)
• Romy | Mid Air (Young)
• Slowdive | Everything is Alive (Dead Oceans)
• Sofia Kourtesis | Madres (Ninja Tune)
• Westside Gunn | And Then You Pray For Me (Griselda / Empire)
• Zach Bryan | Zach Bryan (Belting Bronco / Warner)
• 100 Gecs | 10,000 Gecs (Dog Show Records / Atlantic)

Originally published February 12, 2024 on Medium.