I spent my Halloween night admiring three queer women draped with guitars, dressed up as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost at the iconic Hollywood Bowl in front of 17,000 people. Throwing guitars, rock n’ roll sing-screaming, and kissing each other on the mouth. Instead of dancing my usual hyper, hoppy concert dance in the confines of my seat in section J1, I stood and listened.
Boygenius is an indie group with a deep love for classic rock. Before I knew any of their music, I knew Phoebe Bridgers was featured on a Paul McCartney track in 2020. I knew the cover of their self-titled EP was inspired by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and their Rolling Stone cover was an almost exact replica of Nirvana’s from 1994.
But don’t mistake their love of the classics for the toleration of any kind of male hero-worship. Their band name alone mocks the notion of boys being taught to believe that they are superior from a young age. When the supergroup first formed in 2018 Phoebe Bridgers told Billboard in one of my favorite interviews, that it’s “often men who are lauded for their creative genius, but the thing that we don’t often understand or talk about is that they were allowed to arrive at that creative liberty through so much reinforcement of their inherent worth…”
So, with their name plastered in signage across the Bowl, ‘the boys’ stood nonchalantly on the stage, in front of their all-female backing band, trusting that their audience had been prefaced on the group before them (mainly the facts that the show would be loud, and the boys would be gay).
At their creative core, Boygenius is a rock band. A bit of an unconventional one, as there is no front boy and most of their songs make me want to cry, but then I think, isn’t all rock music unconventional? Isn’t that the point?
I admit, I did have to check myself as I stood there listening to Revolution 0, having these thoughts on what rock music today is. How many different ways are we seeing rock reveal itself, and how can we compare today’s rock music when the genre encompasses artists from Greta Van Fleet to Yungblud? I wondered for a moment if Boygenius is too indie to really be rock.
The anthemic ending of “Stay Down” pulled me back to the performance in front of me. This show- the energy, the audience- feels like a true testament to the enduring spirit of those who refuse to be confined by convention. While pleasing to the ears, the music of Boygenius is meant to provoke. They remind us that rock is a style of creation, as well as a way of being.
In an era of pre-packaged pop and synthetic beats, Boygenius thrives on authenticity. They sing honestly about being in their 20s, touching on topics like making peace with death, the complexity of self-hatred, and writing horny poetry (a fan favorite). In between poetic lines and the ringing out of real-life instruments, I found myself waiting for the quick moments when Julien would sneak a whisper into Lucy’s ear or when Phoebe would visibly get lost in studying the sea of people watching her.
At any typical rock show there’s usually an accepted layer of grime and intoxication that swallows the crowd, but at the Hollywood Bowl on October 31st that seemed to be swapped for a layer of refreshing mountain haze and acceptance. When the lights came up I felt suddenly overwhelmed by the immediate need to write. About the show, about my admiration for 5-foot Julien Baker shredding on guitar, about women, about queerness, about everything, about nothing. I felt all of it creeping up my throat like word vomit so strong I was afraid of projectile-speak far enough to reach the boys’ tour bus.
Instead, I bought an oversized t-shirt, swallowed the words down to my fingers, and when I got home, I wrote this.