Boygenius, “the record.”

The record, the first full-length album by boygenius, starts out with a lovely, sparse, Carter-Family-style a capella harmony on “Without You Without Them.” It’s as if Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker wanted to stake their claim right up front as members of the great American tradition of song. Perhaps it’s their way of showing reverence, that the circle will be unbroken. Maybe they just wanted to ease listeners in gently before blowing our minds with the rest of the album.

The record is close to perfect in sound, lyrics and performance. Each artist is already a strong songwriter and performer, but their gifts together produce the kind of elevated end result that truly warrants the “supergroup” moniker. Produced by boygenius and Catherine Marks (Manchester Orchestra, PJ Harvey) at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, it showcases the strengths of these three powerhouses while building on them, with engineering help from Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin, Carla Azar (Autolux) on drums and Melina Duterte (Jay Som) on bass, among other contributors.

This album packs a one-two-three punch upfront with “$20,” “Emily I’m Sorry” and “True Blue.” The former, which Julien Baker says came from a need for boygenius to have “more sick riffs,” rides a Pixies-style groove with Wilco-esque beeps and whistles underneath. “It’s a bad idea and I’m all about it,” Baker asserts in her signature self-destructive fashion, while Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus back her up, finishing her sentences and buoying her with harmony (“In another life we were arsonists,” they sing). The track holds steady until the end, when the narrator simply has to escape (“Run out of gas, out of time, out of money”), and Bridgers yells “Twentyyy! Dollllars!” in an echo of the way she screams at the end of her own song “I Know the End.” It’s a cathartic masterpiece and boygenius is only just getting started.

After making a six-song EP in 2018, boygenius’ members weren’t sure if they would exist beyond that. Bridgers originally wrote “Emily I’m Sorry” for an ex-girlfriend, before she brought it to the band following the release of 2020 album Punisher. Slow and contemplative, it sounds a bit like her song “Motion Sickness,” and continues her tradition of being an unreliable narrator.

“When I pointed out where the North Star is/ She called me a fuckin’ liar,” she casually relates. Dacus’ and Baker’s voices uplift Bridgers, weaving around hers as she apologizes: “Emily, I’m sorry, I just/ Make it up as I go along.”

It’s apparent immediately for any fan of Lucy Dacus that “True Blue” is her contribution. Besides the obvious tip-off – Dacus handling the lead vocal with her enchanting smoky voice – the lyrics could be straight from her confessional album Home Video, reflecting on a historical friendship: “And it feels good to be known so well/ I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself/ I remember who I am when I’m with you/ Your love is tough, your love is tried and true-blue.”

This song concludes the portion of songs on the record the trio wrote individually, and the rest, they say, were a full team effort.

Perhaps the best example of boygenius’ combined talents is “Not Strong Enough,” on which each gets a verse to contemplate how self-loathing can rise to the level of self-aggrandizement.

“The way I am/ Not strong enough to be your man/ I tried, I can’t,” they sing together on the first chorus, only to switch it up on the next version: “I lied, I am/ Just lowering your expectations.” The song builds to a bridge of “Always an angel, never a god,” Dacus’ voice hitting a poignant high note. They repeat the line, their criticism inherent in the repetition of their lament that women are never able to rise to a godlike status. At best, they can be ministering angels, but it often seems only men can be seen as gods in our misogynistic society.

“Leonard Cohen” is another standout, based on a true story of Bridgers insisting that Dacus and Baker listen to “Trapeze Swinger” by Iron & Wine as they drove on a road trip in Northern California. Feeling it was too awkward to interrupt this 10-minute-long song, because of its clear importance to Bridgers, neither had the heart to tell her they’d missed their exit. The exits being so far apart, this added an extra hour to their travel time, but Dacus was inspired to write: “You felt like an idiot adding an hour to the drive/ But it gave us more time to embarrass ourselves/ Telling stories we wouldn’t tell anyone else.” The song’s simple arrangement – just acoustic guitar and voices – is reminiscent of Bridgers’ professed favorite Elliott Smith.

The record contains multitudes – rockers like the Baker-led “Satanist,” with its ’90s grunge rock feel, joins quieter numbers like the Bridgers-led “Revolution 0” and the Dacus-led “We’re In Love,” and there are absolutely no misses here. It’s a modern-day classic. Knowing that they recorded 25 songs during these sessions, it does make one long for a messy double-disc boygenius White Album, with whatever their equivalent of “Revolution 9” would be. Instead, they seem to have chosen the disciplined road, with 12 tracks of precise excellence, and saved the messiness for the no-holds-barred honesty in their lyrics.

Follow Rachel Alm at Twitter.com/thouzenfold and Instagram.com/thousandfold.