“I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself,” sigh boygenius on their keenly anticipated debut album the record. In interviews, the indie supergroup comprising Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus have said that writing songs together has enabled them to be more “earnest” than in their solo material. This doesn’t mean that all 12 songs are straightforward confessionals. 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.
the record opens a cappella with the three women’s voices weaving through the old-timey melody of “Without You Without Them”. (The song was written by Dacus and it seems all three wrote independently before bringing compositions to the group for refinement.) It sounds like they’re all gathered around a single mic in an empty church hall wearing tea dresses (fans of Applewood Road’s eponymous 2016 album will love it). The song is a celebration of a friendship and artistic collaboration built on intimate conversation: “Speak to me, speak to me, speak to me until your history’s no mystery.” It’s a line balanced later on the record by the fear that “I might like you less now you know me so well”.
