boygenius bare their souls on ‘the rest’
After the release of their debut album the record earlier this year, indie-rock supergroup boygenius, comprised of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, have now dropped their follow-up EP, the rest. Showcasing the band’s songwriting power, the rest mixes together elements of the record and distils them down into four perfect tracks. They recorded the project in May of this year, so the boys were surely flying high on the success of their debut album.
Following a run of electrifying shows, including Gunnersbury Park in London and Madison Square Garden in New York, boygenius are at the height of their powers and this EP shows that they aren’t going to stop putting their hearts on a musical platter for us. While the combined power of boygenius is front and centre, the individual talents and sounds of each member shines through.
“Black Hole” (perhaps a nod to “Not Strong Enough” from the record, which opens with the line ‘Black hole opens in the kitchen,’) starts delicately, building out of Baker’s vulnerable, wavering vocals into an expansive drumscape that evokes the end of “I Know The End” by Bridgers. Baker sings, “You can see the stars, the ones the headlines said, this morning were being spat out, by what we thought was just destroying everything for good,” moving the track into an explosion of vulnerability. It ends with the simple lyric, “Sometimes I need to hear your voice,” reminding us that although we can feel at peace in our solitude, we all need somebody.
In “Afraid of Heights,” the boys envy the reckless and examine the privilege of being able to choose whether to do dangerous things. Singing “You called me a coward, I replied ‘I don’t wanna live forever’ but I don’t want to die tonight,” Dacus watches on as someone else lives fearlessly; she looks at their recklessness through the lens of someone living in fear but who desperately wants to break out and be brave. Dacus wonders whether it pays to be a risk taker, to dream and to hope, and thinks that it’s a privilege to not be forced into a life of danger. She breaks our hearts with the lyrics “Not everybody gets to live a life that isn’t dangerous” and “It hurts to hope for more, it hurts to hope the future will be better than before.”
“Voyager”, lead by Bridgers, might be one of the group’s saddest songs yet (which is quite the achievement). Ethereal and profound, Bridgers sings “You thought I’d never leave, and I let you believe you were right,” examining a romantic relationship gone sour and how the atoms of life look and feel different after it ends. Any fan of Phoebe Bridgers knows about her fixation on the moon, and she addresses it again in “Voyager,” singing “Walking alone in the city, makes me feel like a man on the moon”. She seems to have come full circle from their debut EP in 2018, where she begged “I wanna hear one song without thinking of you, I wish I was on a spaceship, just me and my dog and an impossible view”.
The Baker-led final track “powers” is a grunge-tinged track that is reminiscent of the record’s “Anti-Curse”. The guitar riff a haunting echo, relatable and healing, Baker’s gut-wrenching lyrics are backed up by Dacus’ and Bridgers’ echoes. Lyrics such as “Thrust into being, careening along, on a crooked little trajectory” and “The force of our impact, the fission, the hum of our contact, the sound of our collision” reflect how this year (and life itself) must have felt for the group – a wild ride from the start, but they’ve got each other and that’s what matters.
This year has been an adventure for boygenius and their deep connection brings out the best in them, both personally and musically. the rest is the ultimate sister to the record; it’s going to make you cry, but in the best way.
the rest is out now.