The Friday the Thirteenth Gift we all Needed: the rest

Graphic by Julia Norkus

By Julia Norkus and Karenna Umscheid

the rest, the surprise EP from boygenius released on Oct. 13, winds down the biblical, visceral power of boygenius’ album with a solemn promise to continue moving forward – whatever that may look like for the band. 

The lyricism of boygenius is equal parts emotionally destructive and relieving in the intrinsic, universal connection that their heartbreaking music invites. It is scientific and religious, historical and present. Their music writhes with honesty, tethering metaphors to reality in pains and revelations. Though it’s easy to commodify and repackage newly released music as another brand of ‘indie girl’ or ‘sad girl,’ the electric chemistry between Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus is too exceptional for any label and more genre-bending than it gets credit for. Before I say anything more, the songs on this EP felt reminiscent of boygenius’s self-titled EP, stripped back but with better production—it indicates growth and expansion for the artists, both in their personal careers and as a trio. The spirit of boygenius is that of a timeless band, set to transcend generations with music that runs hot with blood and tears. 

“Black Hole” by Karenna

I was lucky enough to be at the Boston boygenius concert where they played this song for the first time live. The picture painted in the beginning of the song is emblematic of boygenius’ keen storytelling ability, wherein songs are rapturous, epics of love in whatever ways it can be twisted. They begin with “In a rainstorm / Suckin’ down a dart on the back porch,” opening with an eerie portrait that cascades into the vignettes of despair, want, and emotional confusion. boygenius has the very special skill of being able to put gut-wrenching, horrifically sad yearning into words. In the second half of the song, they sputter around days and nights with short descriptions, snapshots of teeth and faces, comings and goings, noise after noise. The song concludes with a realization, while drowning in the yearning, under flashes of memory and thought, the lyric sings “Sometimes, I need to hear your voice,” recognizing that underneath the noise there is a slow, punctual heartbeat for love, of which it all boils down to. 

“Afraid of Heights” by Karenna

In “Afraid of Heights,” the band spins guttural depression through melodic beauty with unparalleled lyric profundity. The lyric “I want to live a vibrant life / But I want to die a boring death” profoundly demonstrates the specificity and honesty that makes boygenius’s music relatable and powerful. “Afraid of Heights” depicts toxicity and fear in a relationship, like that of the transformation from “Me & My Dog” to “Letter To An Old Poet.” Yet it also acknowledges the hurt that remains, even within optimism, particularly with the lyrics that end the song – “Oh, it hurts to hope the future will be better than before.” boygenius, in their entire body of work and especially in the rest, astound me with their ability to transform the most viscerally painful feelings into ballads screamed universally, sweet harmonies and incredible swells that pull from the depths of their hearts. An element of the power they hold that speaks to their timelessness and musical prowess, this skill to turn pain into art, not as commodification, but as community, is so special. 

“Voyager” by Julia

With all that in mind, just like the vocal stylings of “Without You Without Them,” the a cappella intro of “Voyager” cradles me like a lullaby. This acoustic waltz calls back to not just one song from the record (2023), but two—there are talks about the lyric “And sometimes you let me read your mind,” also being related to “Cool About it” (“Once I took your medication to know what it’s like / Now I have to act like I can’t read your mind”). Baker, Bridgers and Dacus are continuing a story, or winding down from one, through this EP. Maybe it’s a double entendre—the rest might be the rest of the album, or it might be an indication of much needed rest and have some connection to the airy, acoustic style. “Voyager” feels like a release, a post-break up affirmation that yes, while I would have given you everything, I needed to move on. The whispery style of Bridgers’s vocals feel like an incantation—a spell for all heartbroken and lost souls looking to come home. 

“Powers” by Julia

Julien Baker’s tracks from the record are arguably some of my favorites. She has such a level of angst and puts the accents in just the right place that I can’t help but skip to “Satanist” on a day that I need a little extra bad-assery. The opening chord of “Powers” feels like a call back to “Anti-Curse”—much in the same way that “Voyager” might be a punctuation mark on “Cool About it,” “Powers” acts similarly. There’s also no doubt about the palpability of boygenius’s love for each other and it’s emphasized by the closing lines of this song, “The force of our impact, the fission / The hum of our contact, the sound of our collisions.” In an Oct. 2023 interview with The Grammys, Baker mentioned book Cruising Utopia by José Esteban Muñoz, where she talks about words she adopted from him, “Those are both semi-stolen lyrics…he talks about the idea of the lived experience being its own work of art, and then that art needing a witness to be savored and appreciated…It’s small and daily and powerful.” To hear Baker say this, it accentuates the love that the trio shares with each other, much like Dacus’s line in “True Blue”—“It feels good to be known so well / I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself.” In their period of what might be a long rest, I hope they find peace with each other and continue cultivating love and joy, both in art and in life.