HUGH’S A HOOT IN THE NEW DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

INDIE Boygenius The Record (Polydor/Interscope) ★★★★★

JULIEN Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus are all too aware of how this is meant to go. For the three solo artists’ first EP as Boygenius, they copied the pose of an archetypal supergroup, Crosby, Stills & Nash, on the cover. In January they were photographed on Rolling Stone in the matching suits and ties Nirvana wore for the same magazine in 1994. Their new ballad, Cool About It, features an audible nod to Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer. They know their history.

But it looks like this is a band that will last. They were friends first, releasing debut solo albums around the same time and bumping into each other to swap reading material. All three have been doing nicely alone, with Bridgers earning Grammy nominations and mainstream recognition on the back of her Punisher album.

Working together, they’ve pushed each other to surpass their origins. Songs aren’t easily identifiable as the product of one writer, though Baker seems more responsible for electric, energetic outliers such as Satanist. Instead they tend to exchange verses or weave their fairly similar voices together, especially on the a cappella Without You Without Them.

Lyrically, all three have a skill for setting a scene. All the specifics feel like the listener has been given permission to join them on a wrongway road trip, “Drag racing through the canyon”, or half-swimming, half-drowning, “making peace with my inevitable death”.

They’re funny, too. Like that band name, there’s another dig at male egotism on the song Leonard Cohen, where Dacus compares herself to the late folk hero:

“I am not an old man having an existential crisis at a Buddhist monastery writing horny poetry.”

It dawns that all references to love and intimacy are not about romantic partners. They’re singing about each other. On We’re in Love in particular, it couldn’t be clearer that these three would do anything for each other.