boygenius
boygenius EP
Matador/Remote Control
Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus are friends. They also happen to be three of the most exciting young indie songwriters going around. Each of their recent albums has been critically acclaimed and all three artists appear to be on the same trajectory. This has seen Baker, Bridgers and Dacus bump into each other on tour and at festivals over the past few years where they have become fans of each others’ works. The idea of a joint tour was discussed via emails, and then the idea of recording together was too good an idea to ignore.
Whilst they had all struck up friendships individually, they hadn’t all been in the same room together until they convened in LA to start work on what would shortly become the boygenius EP. The brief was simple. Each member would bring an almost completed song to the session, but the chemistry between the songwriters was so strong that they completed and extra three even more collaborative songs on the day.
Lucy Dacus takes lead vocals for the gently chugging Bite The Hand before the full band kick in and Baker and Bridgers and their voices around the chorus of “I can’t love you how you want me too”. With only one album under her belt, Phoebe Bridgers is the ‘novice’ in terms of output to date, but she provides a couple of standout moments for boygenius. The first, Me And My Dog is lyrically strong, has delightfully pensive vocals, stellar banjo work from Julian Baker and even some dubstep inspired ‘dropouts’. You would be hard pressed to find a better song released this year.
It is said that Julien Baker played many of the instruments on these songs with keyboards, guitar, banjo and mandolin amongst her talents. She takes the lead on Souvenir before handing vocal duties over to Dacus without lightening the lyrical load of the tune. Ketchum, ID rounds out the record and is a showcase of the three vocalists. Sounding as though it was recorded yesteryear with all three singers gathered around the one microphone, it adds a different flavour to a record that already covers much ground.
Individually Baker, Bridgers and Dacus are three of the brightest young talents going around, collectively as Boygenius they are beyond reproach. Lets hope this hastily formed outfit have much more life in them yet.
CHRIS HAVERCROFT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljOonyYsMJI
