I want to hear your story and be a part of it

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

07/04/23 : The Record - boygenius

We move from an exceedingly pretentious album title last week to a pleasingly understated one this week - I know boygenius are a "supergroup" composed of people who I barely know, but there's been a lot of fuss about them (and it was impossible to get tickets for their gigs recently - with the tour pleasingly being called The Tour).  So I've got high enough hopes for it, with a slight undercurrent of concern that it might be a bit fey.

Well it does have moments of feyness, but it's not overwhelmingly (or should that be underwhelmingly?) so - all in all this feels like a decent enough set of songs.  It's firmly in the (currently pretty strong) "tortured female indie lo-fi genius" field - think Soccer Mommy and Julia Jacklin (or Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus - with good reason).  I really liked "Not Strong Enough" on first listen - the album as a whole feels like it would need several listens to get into properly but, unlike most other albums that I say that for, I really think there is a chance this will get more listens from me.

We're at #1 with a new entry this week - it will be interesting to see how long it hangs around (not long, I'm guessing).  The rest of the top five are Melanie Martinez (another new entry), DMA's (a hat-trick of new entries, with a weird apostrophe), The Weeknd (it's 67th consecutive week in the top 20!) and Lana.

Wikipedia tells me that boygenius are Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker (who, unlike the other two, I'm not aware I've previously met) - they released an EP in 2018, but this is their debut album.  The critics LURVED it (unsurprisingly) and it's also done pretty well commercially - #1 in Ireland and The Netherlands as well as here.  Their entry tells us the group came about because of their frustration at being banded together as "women in rock" - Lucy Dacus makes the point "that the idea of women in music "should not be remarkable whatsoever"".  Which I quite agree with, but unfortunately me agreeing with it doesn't make it so.

"Customers also listened to" Tennis, quinnie, Feist and Joesef - Feist being the only one I've heard of out of that lot.  boygenius feel like they're worth a bit more of an investigation though and I quite liked this on first listen and feel like it would only improve with more effort - if this is your sort of thing then check it out.

31/03/23 - Probably not as great as it thinks it is
14/04/23 - Perfectly fine if you like this sort of thing

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