– boygenius – In Concert – Coachella Music Festival – April 22, 2023 – Band Soundboard –
boygenius to kick off Friday morning and put it in good places for the weekend.
When I first heard about boygenius I was under the impression they were a UK band, since BBC 6 Music and Radio X were so high on them they got serious airplay and session appearances almost from the get-go. So naturally, I was pleasantly shocked to find out this bunch are Americans and they come from celebrated endeavors and offer further proof that new American music is far from dead – far from moribund and reaching new and interesting places. But unlike the rest of the world, mainstream media are a bit slow to react. Like always (or at least the past 40+ years) we’ve had to rely on the underground, the left-of-the-dial, word of mouth and sheer accident to find what we’ve had all along.
A little background if you’re just hearing about boygenius now (or saw them briefly on SNL and wondered) – thanks Wikipedia:
Boygenius (stylized in all lowercase) is an American indie supergroup consisting of American singer-songwriters Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus. They debuted with their self-titled EP in 2018, and then returned after a hiatus with their debut studio album, The Record (2023), which was both a critical and commercial success. Labelled an “instant classic” by NME, it topped the charts in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands, and peaked at number four on the U.S. Billboard 200. Their second EP, The Rest, was released on October 13, 2023.
Bridgers has called the formation of the group “kind of an accident,” wherein each of the members were simply fans of each other’s work and then became friends. Both Dacus and Bridgers had opened for Baker on separate tours in 2016, and they all ran in similar circles as young up-and-coming performers navigating the indie scene.
The three became close and shared their frustrations of constantly being compared to each other as “women in rock” despite their considerably different musical styles. Dacus has commented that the idea of women in music “should not be remarkable whatsoever,” with Bridgers adding, “it’s not a genre.” Each has spoken on the tendency of the music industry to pit women against each other, and the group was formed in part to reject this idea. “I hope people see the three of us and know there isn’t competition,” Dacus has said. “You don’t have to compete with your contemporaries. You can make something good with people you admire.”
Amen to that.
Dive in – crank it up. Goes well with cardio – treadmill – coffee – contemplating the universe – being here now.
Go.
