Boygenius The Rest

Title aside, this bookend EP to Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus’ full-length debut isn’t a dustpan full of cutting-room-floor detritus released to clear the vaults, but a volume unto itself. “These are songs that weren't ready for the record and then we spent time on them and they're ready now,” Dacus tells Apple Music's Zane Lowe. While 2023's full-length debut was the sound of three accomplished artists and friends figuring out how to work together, the rest, coming six months and a world tour later, is the product of their natural chemistry developing into something more innate. “We're getting really good at recording with each other,” Bridgers says. “Our communication got so streamlined by the time we went to record this, we knew it was going to be great.” The four songs are on the pared-back and quieter side compared to forebears “$20” and “Satanist”, but no less striking or unsparing in their eye for detail. The Dacus-led “Afraid of Heights” is a romantic testament to risk avoidance, while “Voyager” is vintage Bridgers in melancholy mode, and the minimalism feels like a statement of intent rather than the hallmark of unfinished castoffs. “There's an immediacy to the decision-making that came out of it being three days in the studio and then trying to be sparse with the arrangements,” says Baker. “We had never had the experience of allowing ourselves a wealth of time to be ambitious, to fully maximise a track and then edit it down. And so this is slightly adorned scaffolding.”