the record

An album that redefines collaboration on a spiritual level. ... 12 poetically moving pieces of art that focus on emotions and environments most would attempt to ignore. The Record hit our speakers with high expectations, and not a single second let us down.

It’s clear all three are being pushed beyond their usual creative comfort zones.

Most of them slot together with an appealing combination of simplicity and enigma – like those little puzzle cubes made of three types of wood. All the while, you can hear the careful questioning with which the songwriters have honed one another’s thoughts until they slot smoothly together to become satisfying tactile emotional experiences.

All over The Record, they keep recombining their individual styles into a different kind of chemistry for each song. That’s why they transcend any kind of “supergroup” cliché. After all, supergroups are a dime a dozen compared to actual great bands. And boygenius leave no doubt about where they stand.

The result is some of the most pristine songwriting Bridgers, Dacus and Baker have ever penned. ... This debut is a gorgeous testament to what can happen when you allow yourself to fully be seen.

While all three women may continue on to even greater heights as individuals, the record offers something so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s a covenant between three soulmates, a trio of best friends ready to carry the torch for a new musical generation.

It's a great illustration of how the trio are even more than the sum of their considerable parts. [Jun 2023, p.25]

In every sense, it is a union of its creators’ art and voices. It’s an album in conversation with their EP, with their inspirations, and with their solo work, resulting in one of the rare cases where the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

It’s just as special as you’d expect.

A collaborative winner delightfully devoid of ego or pretense. Here, each voice works to create something greater than the sum of its parts, which is rare for supergroups.

It’s like summer arrived three months early. And like one of the best albums of 2023 arrived right on time.

It's never a guarantee that a collaboration from talented soloists will work, let alone multiple times. The Record navigates that hurdle deftly enough to suggest that none of these artists have reached their full potential. Neither has Boygenius.

Real intimacy is what you find on The Record, the melding of what’s yours and mine—a favorite Joan Didion quote, songs by Iron & Wine and the Cure, passages from Ecclesiastes—until what’s left is something greater than the sum.

Democratically curated and effusing a palpable enthusiasm, the project stands as a testimony to the power of aesthetic commonality, enduring friendship, and the magic of teamwork, something we could all use more of these days.

The overarching weakness seems to be that, while this is a set of songs being performed by talented musicians clearly having the time of their lives, it often feels like nothing more, simply a (great) set of songs rather than a coherent album statement. The previous paragraph’s fleeting criticism is just that, though: fleeting. The Record, when compared to Boygenius, inevitably comes out much ahead, reflecting the singer-songwriters’ substantial growth as musicians in the intervening half-decade.

The album sounds like something knocked out almost live in a spirit of excitement, rather than with objective vision or commercial muscle. I’d be hard pressed to assert that this (unlike CS&N) amounts to more than the sum of its parts, rather than a celebration of great parts. But it is impossible to argue that as a group, Boygenius are pretty super.

Collectively, boygenius feels heftier and hookier than Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus do on their own, and this collective instinct towards immediacy pays great dividends: it's bracing to hear such introspective singer/songwriters embrace the pleasures of a united front.

While the record delivers on the promise of those talents united—exceptional rock music by three sad-song experts—it doesn’t always sound more timeless than topical. But when it does thrive at the former, the record is exploring more rudimentary feelings rather than emotional coalescence.

The years between boygenius recordings have made all three songwriters more confident and more levelheaded.

The Record is beautifully integrated, each song feeling like an ongoing conversation, a harmonious thread they can pick up any time. It’s very much worth getting to know it. [Jun 2023, p.85]

Their debut album – aptly titled the record – is here in all its poetic, cutting glory; and it’s been entirely worth the wait.

Dacus brings a sense of wit and sensitivity; Bridgers a quiet melancholy; Baker a raw ferocity. the record combines those individual instincts into a group effort that's compelling in all sorts of ways — and one that's also charmingly (and, in a way, fittingly) imperfect.

Opening your debut LP with its three least engaging tracks is a bold move that almost capsizes the whole project. ... Fortunately, bar a scattering of clunky lines (“I don’t want to die / That’s a lie”), the rest of ‘the record’ manages to successfully scale the vertiginous heights set by the eight solo albums preceding it.

So, the record is not an epoch-defining instant classic. It’s just fine. Occasionally amazing, pretty in parts, patchy in others.