It’s perhaps a no-brainer that Boygenius, the supergroup composed of singer-songwriters Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, would be an instant hit. The trio all have successful solo careers, which is what brought them together in the first place. They’re also queer women who play the guitar and sing about their feelings, though their individual styles are very different. But most importantly, they’re all kindred spirits, whose hard-wired friendship is the sort you can only imagine, or watch on the big screen.
Earlier this year, the group released their debut album The Record, an indie-rock celebration of female friendship and a counterpoint to heteropatriarchal norms associated with such things. It also mocked male artists and how they’re often sold to the public as visionaries (hence their band name). Seven months later, boygenius is back with a release of session offcuts in the form of a four-track EP, The Rest. As the title suggests, these are the dregs that didn’t quite make it the first time around. But don’t be fooled: The Rest is anything but leftovers.
From the stripped-down opener “Black Hole” to the Bridgers-led “Voyager”, a cosmic thread runs throughout the EP. “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,” Baker sings in the former, hinting at a brighter future, while on “Voyager”, Bridgers sings about feeling like a man on the mood – a pleasing follow-on from the group’s 2018 EP, where she dreamed for a spaceship to carry her away from a strained relationship.
Interstellar moments aside, however, there’s a profound intimacy to the four tracks that anchors the listener back down to Earth. Though each track is led by one of the group’s members, the other two are never far behind; they hold each melody through warm harmonies, like holding hands, encapsulating what Baker calls on closer “The Rest”: “The sound of our collision”.
Elsewhere, Bad Bunny surprises with a new album, COBRAH provokes on her latest EP, and Voice Actor shares a revised edition of their hit 2022 debut.
