Rating: 4/5 stars
Despite what the name suggests, the new EP from indie supergroup boygenius (“the record”) is not simply “the rest” of what they recorded for their recent full-length album. In fact, “the rest” is a brand new, consciously compiled four-part story of growth and friendship.
Back in March 2023, the band teased their upcoming album with “Not Strong Enough,” which opens with the imagery of a black hole opening in a kitchen. The song laments the narrator’s restraint from letting loose and exploring the world. The new EP expands this song into a four-part narrative about gaining spirit with the power of friendship. While “the power of friendship” can seem like a vacuous cliche, boygenius puts meaning in the phrase. They do not mean the sentimental smiles of empty gestures and friendship bracelets. They mean the gravitational pulls of deep emotional resonances, each band member being a planet orbiting a common sisterhood.
The black hole returns in the EP’s opening track, aptly titled “Black Hole.” Julien Baker (“Little Oblivions”) references the Hubble telescope’s discovery of a black hole that defies astronomic expectations by creating stars instead of destroying them. The band works off a metaphor of space travel as the exploration of the great, unknowable human psyche. Phoebe Bridgers’ (“Punisher”) track “Voyagers” alludes to the Voyager space probe; Lucy Dacus’ (“Home Video”) “Afraid of Heights” refers to the one phobia an astronaut should not have; the closer “Powers” finishes the EP with a comet disintegrating on some impact. Those last lines summarize the album’s message: “The force of our impact, the fission/The hum of our contact, the collision.”
The sound of the album does not deviate from the reverberated, three-part choral indie rock of “the record.” The band brings back their sincere and cryptic lyricism with production that sounds like it descended from the Andromeda Galaxy. “Black Hole” starts with minimalist beeps similar to a phone dial. As Baker sings of a rainstorm, various instruments collide in a sonic swell. An anxious piano melds with a menacing rumble and tumbling drums. The sounds mix together with a spaciness like the spiral shape of a hurricane revealed to be dust from a galaxy.
Just as the black hole to comet idea circles the start of the album to the ends, “Powers” shares the same crescendo format as “Black Hole.” The trumpets concluding “Powers” weep like a dirge bidding farewell to the scared life shed by the protagonist of the EP’s apparent story.
When boygenius announced they were reuniting–or rather, when fans discovered the band taking a photoshoot in Los Angeles–media outlets started appraising the band’s existence as a testament to the dominance women have in indie rock at the moment. This is true, but to simplify the genius of boygenius into a female Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (“Deja Vu”) dismisses the actual artistry the three have to offer–though comparing them to CSNY does explain why Bridgers sounds like an eerie replica of Joni Mitchell (“Hejira”) on “Voyager.” The new EP explains their popularity not as a mystical phenomenon but a fission of established, intelligent artists, the true stars of modern rock.
Image from xboygeniusx via Bandcamp.com
