Lucy Dacus Delivers Her Most Intimate Dramas Yet

“I'm Thinking About Breaking Your Heart Someday Soon,” Lucy Dacus Confesses in “Limerance,” One of the Highlights from Her Fouth Album Forever is a feeling. It's a Twisted Super-Club Piano Ballad Where She's Munching Popcorn With Friends Who Smoke Weed Weed and Play Grand Theft Auto. But the Virginia Indie-Rock Troubadour Croons As If She's Living Out a Lush-Life Fantasy of Hollywood Romance. When She Delivers That Line About Breaking Someone's Heart, She Gives It a Twist: “And If I do, I'm Breaking Mine Too.” It's Starting to Hear Dacus Switch Gears like that, in Her Warmly Familiar Voice – Earnest, Mournful, Calm Even When She's Tiglia.

Dacus Stretches Out On Forever is a feelingAt A Moment When She's at Her Most High-Profile. It's Her First Album Since She Conquered the World With Boygenius, Teaming Up With Two of the Only Indie Peers Anywhere Near Her Level, Julian Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. The Record Had Three Radically Different Singer-Sngwriters Blending Their Voices to Come Up with New Kinds of Magic. Dacus' “You're in Love” was a Brilliant Heart-Cryps on par with “Triple Dog Dar,” from Her Masterful 2021 Musical Memoir Home Video.

Forever Takes a Different Approach, Going for Adult-Pecific Love Songs, Rather Than the Coming-Of-Age and Coming-Out Tales That made her Name. These Songs Take Place in the Middle of Long-Running Messy Relationships-Some Despetely Romantic, Some Just Painful. “Best Guess” Might Be the Most Hopeful Song She's Done Done Yet, Singing, “You're My Best Guess at the Future/If I Were A Gambling Man, and I Am/You'd Be My Best Bet.” She Gets Vocal Help From Comrades Like Bartees Strange and Jay Som's Melina Drette, Telling Her In love, “You May Not Be Angel, But You Are My Girl.” (Bridgers and Baker Pitch In With Back-Up Vocals Elsewhere.)

When Dacus First Arrival, She was a Southern Indie Kid with a Shy Voice, Yet Her Own Steely Onstage Charisma. It was a revelation to see Her Get Up in a bar and sing her only acoustic version of bruce springsteen's “dancing in the dark,” turning it into the tal of an anxious queer teen in the sticks, hating what she sees in the mirror but gearing up her corage to go face the great big world. Her Sophomore Gem Historianin 2018, Stopped You Dead in Your Tracks with “Night Shift,” Turning A Stupid Coffee Get-Together With An ex Into A a seven-minute soliloquy of revenge and guilt.

On Forever is a feelingshe aims for more intimate drama. “If the Devil's in the Details, then God is in the gap in Your Teeth,” She Sobs in “For Keeps.” In The Jubilant Title Song, She Takes a romantically Charged Road-Trip Over Sped-Up, Recalling, “We Were Cherry-Red in Your Forest-Green 1993 Grand Cherokee.” It's alo a song about the Emotional Compromises that Go with Desire, AS She Sings, “You Knew the Scenic Route/I Knew the Shortcut and Shut My Mouth/Isn't That what's Love's About?” But there's a New Sense of Giddy Release in Her Voice, Espencially When Sheshs, “My Wrists Are In Your Zip-Tie, 25 to Life—why Not?”

“Bullseye” is a Duet with Hozier, where she pines for a guitar-playing mailman. “I Miss Borrowing Your Books To Read Your Names in the Margins,” Hozier Purrs to Her Harmonies. “The closest i got to reading your mind.” “Last time” and “Big Deal” are More Downbeat Acoustic Ballads. “Most Wanted” is the album's Only Guitar Rocker, and Easily Its Most Urgent Track Sonically, A Byrds-Style Rave Where's She's On A Mission “To Catch the Most Wanted Man in West Tennessee.” It's Full of Electric Sexual Testion, with Her Most Breathless Vocals, AS She Sings, “I Feel Your Hand Under the Table At The Fancy Restaurant/Gripping On My Inner Thigh Like If You Don't I'm Gonna Run/But I'm Not Going Anywhere.”

Dacus Does a Lot of Self-Comscious Playing With Clichés On ForeverA Trick that Sometimes Works and Sometimes Doesn't, AS In the Dud “Come Out,” Which Use Over-The-Top Harp Glissandi as a Camp Punchline. But it works Beautifully in “Ankles,” where she sings about libidinal frustration over detached cellos, asking, “what if we don't touch? The Tension Builds Until It Explodes in the Chorus (“Pull Me by the Ankles to Edge of the Bed”), with surprisingly poignant Eighties synth burbles. Near the End of the Song, She Muses, “How Lucky We Are To Have So Much To Lose.” It Could Be a Motto for Dacus Looking Back On Her Amazing First Decade—and Looking at the Unlimited Future Ahead.