Review Summary: The Contrarian Review
“Can we talk about the dreaded ‘sad girl’ descriptor?” Pitchfork Editor-In-Chief Puja Patel asks the members of Boygenius in one of the myriad interviews supporting
The Record, the first full length from the supergroup. The thrust behind Patel’s frustration is completely valid: “Feelings get canonized by gender and other things that have nothing to do with the music”. But her framing of the issue conveniently leaves off the thorny implied follow-up. Who exactly here is doing the canonizing? It’s probably not Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers themselves, and it’s hard to attribute the sentiment to some nebulous group of haters, given that Boygenius might have the highest current approval rating in all of indie. So that really only leaves the critical establishment, who played an undeniable role in the three Boygenius members' enshrinement as some of our greatest modern singer-songwriters and in which Patel currently holds one of the most powerful positions, or the artists’ fans. This review is not the place for the hashing out of all of these admittedly nuanced and historically-informed issues (although I’d suggest whoever takes on that Herculean task start by looking at who pushed the deifying, parasocial sentiments that eventually bullied Mitski out of the public eye). If anything, it all demands that
The Record be examined purely on the merits, where it unfortunately falls short. These songs occasionally suggest the mastery of Boygenius’ three component artists, but not that they’re pushing each other to new heights. Rather, it seems as if they are mostly somewhat mechanically doing their thing, and at worst actively languishing while they happen to be in the same room.
The main subject matter of
The Record is love and (often toxic) relationships, and each of the three songwriters bring a sort of house style to their material. Baker is freewheeling and evocative, Bridgers usually somber and self-deprecating, Dacus more literary and grounded. This is all good in and of itself, but particularly in regard to the Bridgers and Dacus led efforts, there’s an unfortunate lack of dynamism—a sense that they’re tilling the same soil without uncovering anything particularly new. Dacus’ songs provide a few similar snapshots of domestic bargaining and unrest with the occasional witticism strewn about for good measure. They don’t quite contain, however, the catharsis and feeling of emotional discovery that makes her most beloved songs like “Night Shift” and “VBS” really shine. Bridgers particularly appears to be in lyrical ChatGPT mode: “I’m 27 and I don’t know who I am”, “I took your medication to know what it’s like”, “I don’t want to die/that’s a lie”. This is put into particular relief on “Letter to an Old Poet”, where Bridgers suddenly springs to life, erupting with spite and righteous anger towards an ex-lover and a longing for something better. She’s clearly capable of it.
Luckily, Julien Baker’s presence on
The Record provides it with a much needed shot of adrenaline. It’s hard to hear the cinematic alt-rock brilliance of “$20” without concluding that she’s the heart and soul of the band. You can feel the track crackling with liveliness and specificity just in how enthusiastically Dacus and Bridgers back her on it. Baker also takes the lead on “Satanist”, which doesn’t quite reach the heights of “$20”. But at least its use of 90s major label rock-style production is an interesting choice, especially contrasted with the wan, reverb-soaked palette and perfunctory electronics that punctuate most Dacus and Bridgers’ elegies.
Not coincidentally, “$20” is one of the few moments on
The Record where you truly get an understanding of the kinship between the members of the band. In fact, it’s downright perplexing that the critical consensus on it is something along the lines of “Boygenius is greater than the sum of its parts”. Of course there are some nice harmonies throughout, as well as the cursory a cappella opener “Without You Without Them”. Beyond that, one’s only argument for transcendence is that there’s something inherently powerful about Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker backing each other up and overcoming turbulence as a unit. That’s not without merit, but it only goes so far. You’d be able to say the same thing had the three friends just gone on an interview tour together without putting out any music.
The other moment of refreshing connectedness comes on “Not Strong Enough”, a catchy, thoughtful, and low-key subversive bit of throwback adult contemporary. It seems beamed in from an alternate universe where Boygenius is not a totem of modern indie or the power of female friendship nor an amalgam of public personas and misplaced “sad girl” signifiers but instead just a
good band. It’s probably not fair to wish for all of those other things to be stripped away. We are still in the midst of an imperfect but worthwhile critical and cultural project—one working to ensure that artists are discussed on the same terms regardless of gender and affirm that any given person is equally capable of producing transcendent art. But once that conclusion is reached, they must also be free to make stuff that’s just okay.
