Alternative supergroup Boygenius’s debut album The Record is a hazy affair

Boygenius are a supergroup comprising three big names from US indie music. Phoebe Bridgers is the best-known, catapulted to a world of Met Galas and seven-figure Instagram followings by her breakthrough solo album, 2020’s Punisher. Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus occupy the next level down of indie fame, measured in glowing Pitchfork reviews and the kind of elaborately effusive New Yorker profile that opens on a warm October day in Nashville as the interviewee, a 27-year-old singer-songwriter with a frank but bashful manner, answers her cellphone while rummaging distractedly for a throat lozenge, etc.

Their first release as Boygenius (stylised as boygenius) was a self-titled six-song EP in 2018. Its cover showed them sitting on a sofa in the same pose as the portrait on Crosby, Stills & Nash’s self-titled debut album. The mimicry of rock’s most fabled supergroup was designed to highlight difference, not affinity. The young men of CSN from 1969 had been supplanted by the young women of the mockingly named Boygenius. The era of the stereotypical rock supergroup, a monument to clashing male egos and entitlement, was over. Tongue only partly in cheek, Boygenius pitched themselves as an alternative supergroup, one fit for purpose in the modern age.

The Record (stylised as the record) is their first album. It opens with a short a cappella folk number in which Baker, Bridgers and Dacus are ingeniously arranged as though in a semi-circle, with separate voices in the left and right audio channels and the third in full stereo. This subtle awareness of group dynamics filters into the songs’ themes. Intimacy is a frequent topic, often involving protagonists in their late 20s who don’t know themselves but find their bearings through closeness to others. “I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself,” as they sing on “True Blue”.

The concept chimes with the project’s collaborative nature. However, it also points to a lack of forthrightness in the songs. The music is pleasing enough yet lacks distinctive melodies, a shortfall highlighted by the knowing glance at Paul Simon’s highly melodious folk-pop in “Cool About It”. Other tracks settle into a solid indie-rock chug or polite acoustic pattering.

The trio’s vocals dovetail well, but they favour a slow, hazy style that at times verges on the soporific. All supergroups face the challenge of amalgamating a set of different sensibilities without neutralising them. Boygenius haven’t quite cracked it here.

★★★☆☆

‘The Record’ is released by Polydor/Interscope