Boygenius Bring Joy, Tears to Their Triumphant Madison Square Garden Debut
Toward the end of boygenius’ headlining set at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 2, Phoebe Bridgers asked the sold-out crowd for a favor. Could we all put away our phones for the next song? Remarkably, all but a scattering of contrarians complied.
“I was emboldened to write this song because I knew we were going to do this band,” Bridgers said, in one of many references to the rock-solid friendships at the heart of her collaboration with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker. “And if you relate to it, I’m so sorry.”
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With that said, she went into “Letter to an Old Poet,” from their full-length debut, The Record, released this past spring. “I said I think that you’re special,” she sang, hushed and deliberate. Everyone in the audience stayed eerily quiet, too, all their energy focused on watching Bridgers, until she and her bandmates got to the ice-cold third verse: “You’re not special, you’re evil.” Then they all cheered for the devastating emotional truth.
Was that the peak of this incredible night? Or was it at the very end of the encore, when, as Baker ripped an unironically epic guitar solo on “Salt in the Wound,” Bridgers walked to the lip of the stage, climbed down, and went crowd-surfing; Dacus, caught up in the excitement, stripped off her jacket and ripped open her shirt; Bridgers, returning to the stage, did the same; and the two of them collapsed together in a moment of wild, uninhibited joy?
Seeing boygenius at the Garden was a surreal thrill of its own for anyone who’s followed these three indie songwriters as they’ve earned a spot for themselves as latter-day rock gods. If you heard “Bite the Hand” in 2018 and immediately wanted to sing its climactic chorus with 20,000 other people, this was your night. A project that began five years ago as something fun to do before a co-headline tour, then blossomed into an actual honest-to-god band, reached its full potential. And as the screamed-hoarse fans in their skeleton suits, faded T-shirts, and DIY skirt-and-tie combos streamed out of the arena at the end of the night, it felt like boygenius can only get bigger and bolder from here.
The Garden was tuned to a high note of ecstasy and liberation from the moment Muna began their opening set three hours earlier. The room was packed by 8 p.m., and by a couple of songs in, it seemed like every single person in there was standing and screaming along. “I hope you find everything you’re looking for and more tonight,” Katie Gavin told the crowd. If the audience was at an energy level of nine or 10 after her super-charismatic performance of the band’s 2017 synth-pop hit “I Know a Place,” they went all the way to 11 when Bridgers came out as a special guest for 2021’s “Silk Chiffon.” (For any old folks in the largely Gen-Z crowd, the high-decibel response to her appearance onstage was a reminder to bring earplugs the next time you have tickets to see some voices of a generation.)
Boygenius’ set began, like The Record, with the close a cappella harmonies of “Without You Without Them,” which Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus sang from backstage. Their intertwined voices, and the story they told about love and human connection, called back to a folk tradition grounded in many decades of history. That’s part of what makes boygenius so compelling, but it’s far from the whole thing, as witnessed by the crashing electric chords and punk howls of “$20” and “Satanist,” the first two songs they played after running onstage. Bridgers’ “Will you be an anarchist with me?/Sleep in cars and kill the bourgeoisie” got a particularly enthusiastic reaction from the crowd. All three of them used every square foot of the stage, especially Baker, who thrashed around on lead guitar with a giddy energy that recalled Angus Young.
“They’re right there!” one fan whisper-shouted to a friend. “They’re perfect!” she added a few songs later.
Each of the three musicians in boygenius is a strong, distinctive songwriter with a dedicated fanbase of her own, which is one reason it feels like such an event when they unite. (The live version of the band is so stacked with songwriting talent that Melina Duterte, who low-key made some of the finest indie records of the 2010s as Jay Som, is up there on backing keyboards, guitar, and occasional horns. Boygenius Nation: Go buy a copy of Turn Into or Anak Ko if you haven’t heard them yet.) But even when they’re headlining an arena full of admirers, they’re still each other’s biggest fans. Bridgers punched the air with pride as Dacus sang the opening lines of “True Blue,” her movingly detailed tribute to a close friendship with someone who’s only posing as a winter bitch. Later, before bringing the house down with “Anti-Curse,” Baker talked about how Bridgers and Dacus helped her get over her fear of singing a few years ago. “These guys have given me my voice back,” she said. “Many times before this, and in many ways.”
It was a night of laughter and tears, but mostly the happy kind. Bridgers thanked the venue’s security team for handing out tissues after “Cool About It,” whose perfectly pitched verses might be the best showcase on The Record for the three musicians’ unique lyrical styles, and “Souvenir,” which is just brutal. Each member sang one song from her most recent solo album: “Graceland Too” for Bridgers, “Please Stay” for Dacus, and “Favor” for Baker. These were among the most transcendent moments in the set, and if time wasn’t an issue, it would have been nice to hear the Boys add their harmonies to some of the other highlights from their solo catalogs.
After closing the main set with “Not Strong Enough” — an anthem that was born to be played as the last song in a main set at the Garden — Dacus, Bridgers, and Baker reappeared at a smaller stage at the other end of the floor to perform all four songs from The Rest, the EP they’re preparing to release on Oct. 13. One of the new songs, sung by Dacus, featured the Springsteenian lyric “I don’t wanna live forever, but I don’t wanna die tonight.” They all sounded like future favorites for anyone who loves the 18 songs that boygenius have released up until now.
“Who saw us at Brooklyn Steel in 2018?” Dacus asked the crowd in the final encore, back on the main stage. Many people cheered — probably a few more than the number who could fit into that 1,800-capacity club. She held the microphone out to the crowd to sing the last chorus of “Ketchum, ID,” from their debut EP. Thousands of voices joined together, united in feeling something. Then the lights came back up and the Boys rocked on.
Additional reporting by Jonathan Bernstein
Set List
“Without You Without Them”
“$20”
“Satanist”
“Emily I’m Sorry”
“True Blue”
“Cool About It”
“Souvenir”
“Bite the Hand”
“Revolution 0”
“Stay Down”
“Leonard Cohen”
“Please Stay”
“Favor”
“Graceland Too”
“Me & My Dog”
“We’re in Love”
“Anti-Curse”
“Letter to an Old Poet”
“Not Strong Enough”
B Stage:
“Black Hole”
“Afraid of Heights”
“Voyager”
“Powers”
Encore:
“Ketchum, ID”
“Salt in the Wound”
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