More about: boygenius

We’ve had the record in our lives for almost month now, so I thought it was a good time to step back and take a look at where it sits in the wider output of boygenius and its members. The supergroup collectively has a lot of albums to its name now, so I’ve decided it’s only right that I should rank them.

So here we go – this is the boygenius Cinematic Universe, ranked from good to life-changing. 

11. Turn Out the Lights – Julien Baker (2017)

I’ll hold my hands up here. Julien Baker is the boygenius member with whom I’m least enamoured. I think she brings a great deal to the group and she’s a fantastic artist in her own right, but I find myself going back to her albums far less regularly than I do those of Dacus and Bridgers. In many ways however, she’s the blueprint for the band. She was the first of the three to ever release an album, and I would argue that her influence audibly hangs over the other two. In fact, I was surprised to learn that she’s the band’s youngest member (albeit by a small margin) just because she sounds and feels so mature. 

Having said all this, I do think she dropped the ball a little on her second album. Don’t get me wrong – I still enjoy it, but it doesn’t feel as though she’s exploring much new ground, and when her songs so regularly utilise the same atmosphere and tempo, this is a bit of a problem. As I said though, it still has its moments. 

10. Little Oblivions – Julien Baker (2021)

It’s on her third album, Little Oblivions, that Baker finally decides to change it up. On her previous two records she’s the only performer, whereas this third outing opts for richer arrangements, featuring a wider cast of musicians – including Dacus and Bridgers on backing vocals.

Tonally, it’s also a breath of fresh air, with the songs having a brighter tone when compared to the bleak backdrop of the first two albums. I hope Baker continues to diversify her song-writing like this, because the album has a lot to offer. 

9. boygenius – boygenius (2018)

It might seem sacrilegious to place the debut boygenius EP so relatively low in the list, but I have said that every album in the ranking is at least good. Every song on this EP is decent, but I feel like with just six tracks it’s unable to compete with some of the other projects in the band’s oeuvre.

Then again, its brevity is also a strength. The EP was recorded in one fell swoop and self-produced by the trio, which gives its six tracks the feeling of a fever dream. 

It also contains what I feel is still the crown-jewel in the boygenius crown – ‘Me & My Dog’. The song is a revelation, and the band members clearly agree, choosing to interpolate its melody and lyrics in the closing track of the record, ‘Letter To An Old Poet’. It’s a satisfying full-circle moment that nevertheless fails to beat the source material. 

8. No Burden – Lucy Dacus (2016)

On Lucy Dacus’ debut, we meet a markedly different artist to the one we’re now used to. The Lucy on No Burden is a more rustic Lucy; one who eschews drum machines and synths in favour of grungey guitars and drum kits. She retains some of this punk rock spirit to this day of course, but it’s even more pronounced here. Even her singing is different – less precise, more snarled. But even at this early stage in her career, her magical ear for melody is more than audible.

7. Sprained Ankle – Julien Baker (2015)

Julien Baker's debut Sprained Ankle is to sad girls as In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is to sad boys. It’s the earliest project in this list and, as I said earlier, I’d be very surprised if Dacus and Bridgers hadn’t drawn upon it for inspiration. Despite featuring just nine songs, the LP takes you on a gut-wrenching emotional journey. Eight years later, it remains Julien Baker’s strongest solo album, but it isn’t for the faint-hearted and it should absolutely come with a health warning. 

6. Better Oblivion Community Center – Better Oblivion Community Center (2019)

This self-titled album contains the only music ever released by Better Oblivion Community Center, the short-lived duo comprised of Phoebe Bridgers and Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst. And if internet rumour-mill is to be believed, it’s likely to stay that way, since the relationship between the pair has allegedly turned sour. All this aside though, the album is severely underrated. When viewed alongside boygenius, it’s proof of what an amazing collaborator Bridgers is – she and Oberst deftly combine their styles to produce a record that manages to sound a little like both of them and nothing like either of them, all at once. 

5. Historian – Lucy Dacus (2018)

It should be clear from what I’ve said above that I think Lucy Dacus made a good debut album. But it’s hard to overstate quite how much she expands her horizons for her second, adding strings, horns, and a truckload of lyrical depth. Historian is a loose concept album about (in Lucy’s words) “living through loss and the inevitable darkness of life and doing so hopefully and joyfully”. For too long this album was slept on, until earlier this year when the opening track ‘Night Shift’ became a TikTok sensation. Quite right, quite right. 

4. Punisher – Phoebe Bridgers (2020)

Phoebe Bridgers’ sophomore album sent her from indie sweetheart to sad-girl superstar overnight. Pop-rock banger ‘Kyoto’ and grandiose album closer ‘I Know the End’ both stand out as highlights, but the record’s most moving moment for me is ‘ICU’, a song co-written with drummer Marshall Vore about her break-up with…drummer Marshall Vore. When compared to her relatively paired-back debut, the album is an expansive affair, featuring a cast of collaborators which includes Baker, Dacus, Oberst, Jenny Lee Lindberg, and violinist Rob Moose, whose string arrangements bring the songs to life. In fact, Moose’s strings are such a crucial component of the album that Bridgers decided to release alternate versions of some of its songs featuring just her vocal and Moose’s strings, on her EP Copycat Killer.

3. Stranger in the Alps – Phoebe Bridgers (2017)

Truly one of the most astonishing debut albums of the 21st century. On Stranger in the Alps, Phoebe Bridgers arrives fully-formed, confident in her artistry, and clear in her vision. Her voice is so distinctive, but even at this early stage she’s not afraid of drawing on the talents of others. ‘Scott Street’ is another collaboration with Vore, ‘Would You Rather’ acts as a duet of sorts with Conor Oberst, and the album’s closer is a cover of a Sun Kil Moon song. It’s a tired observation, but the fact Bridgers was only in her early 20s when the album was written and recorded is mind-blowing – the lyrics paint a picture of someone wise and worldly, exploring topics like mental illness and emotional abuse. And despite all the wallowing, Stranger in the Alps never even nearly gets bogged down in itself – its title, after all, is an esoteric butt-sex joke. Look it up.

2. the record – boygenius 

I’ll be honest – I was sceptical when it was announced that boygenius were making a full-length album. The EP had been a fun diversion, but the prospect of an LP felt indulgent. I wondered what these artists could really achieve together that they couldn’t on their own. Wouldn’t an album just sound like a compilation with a few tracks from each artist with backing vocals from the other two? Well, in places it does sound like this – ‘Revolution 0’ could have appeared on Punisher, while ‘True Blue’ is very evidently from the mind of Lucy Dacus. But elsewhere, the trio come together to become far more than the sum of their parts. About halfway through the record, the lines between each member’s contributions break down to the point of invisibility. And what’s so remarkable about the collaboration here is how non-hierarchical it is. Maybe I’m tempting fate, but it’s near-impossible to imagine boygenius ever succumbing to creative differences. That’s not to say they don’t have creative differences – they absolutely do, but it’s used as a strength not a weakness. 

"the trio come together to become far more than the sum of their parts."

Since the project began, boygenius has aimed to subvert indie rock’s masculine trappings. Even the band’s name is a subtle dig at the egoistic history of all-male supergroups. For a recent Rolling Stone shoot, the band chose to emulate Nirvana, and the cover of their debut EP is a recreation of the cover of Crosby Stills & Nash’s eponymous debut. These are references made with love and admiration, but also with tongues lodged firmly in cheeks. In 2021, Bridgers called the late David Crosby a “little bitch” after he characterised her guitar-smashing as “pathetic”. Of course, what Crosby had failed to realise here is that Bridgers’ guitar-smashing episode was a parodic sending-up of the entire male rock star pantomime. 

And it’s tempting therefore to say that the egalitarianism of the boygenius debut speaks to a more feminine form of rock-stardom, free of ego and instead in service of a common goal. Maybe this is a fair assessment. Or maybe it’s the kind of gender essentialist take that music ought to be leaving in the past. Whatever the conclusion, it’s clear that a part of what boygenius is doing is a form of drag artistry – it’s no coincidence that they continually refer to each other as ‘the boys’. “The way I am not strong enough to be your man”, goes the refrain on ‘Not Strong Enough’.

On the record though, these gender games are eclipsed by the music’s main themes – love and friendship. All three members have spoken about how they’re in love with one another, and that comes through in the songs. The lyrics cover a lot of ground – and seem to often be inspired by each member’s relationships – but regularly there’s euphemism at play, such as in the title of ‘We’re In Love’. And then in the video to ‘True Blue’, directed by none other than Kristen Stewart, the boys make out with each other! It’s a utopian moment that really feels not only like them giving the fans what they want, but also them leaning into their own feelings of sapphic joy. What a triumph the record is. Long live boygenius.

1. Home Video – Lucy Dacus (2021)

This feels a little contradictory now that I’ve said that boygenius are greater than the sum of their parts, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t bring myself to place any album higher than Lucy Dacus’ Home Video. The Lucy on Home Video is ready to talk about anything and she’s up for using every tool at her disposal. The album’s high point is undoubtedly ‘Thumbs’ – it’s a haunting, scathing attack on a friend’s absent father which sits as one of the most vulnerable songs I’ve ever heard. But ‘Thumbs’ is just one gut-wrenching episode on an album full of them. ‘Brando’ manages simultaneously to be a pop banger and a quotidian relationship study, while ‘Going Going Gone’ is a Laurel Canyon campfire singalong for the 21st century, featuring the likes of Bridgers, Baker, and Mitski in the background. Every song is immaculately produced by a dream team comprised of Dacus and her frequent collaborators Colin Pastore, Jacob Blizard, and Jake Finch.

Lucy’s vocals are stunning throughout, and the lyrics are well-observed and cohesive. Home Video is a coming-of-age album, with songs about parent-child relationships, formative run-ins with sex and love, and the complex experience of growing up in a religious household. During press for the album, Dacus spoke about “the moment when you first reflect on your childhood, which I think can also be the moment that childhood is over”. With this in mind, it’s clear that Home Video expertly depicts a transition to adulthood – a transition that seems to be happening later and later in life. The stories on the record are mostly told through a cosy, nostalgic VCR filter; the album is peppered with lines like “The sun can’t kick the habit of going down” and “They play oldies in the afternoon for the elderly and me and you”. 

This makes it all the more startling when we’re forced to look at difficult moments in high definition. “I imagine my thumbs on the irises” she says of her friend’s father, “pressing in until they burst”. Every now and again, a faultless singer-songwriter record comes along, and Home Video is one of those. No notes.

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More about: boygenius