Those patient enough to listen can enjoy songwriter’s works

they’ve figured it out,” Dacus sings.

Dacus quietly renounced Christianity as a teen but retains plenty of its culture.

In “Pillar of Truth,” she invokes biblical language to describe her dying grandmother, calling her “a pillar of truth turned to dust.”

The soft-spoken singer learned how to perform while singing in her church. Dacus’ mother played piano, and her father strummed a guitar in the background.

“It’s so weird being looked at by lots of people at once,” she said. “It’s even weirder when it’s your own material. Being in a church band and also doing theater got me used to being onstage, and it helped my confidence.”

And yet, for an institution supposed to reflect God and not those singing his praises, the church seemed to focus on the latter in Dacus’ eyes.

“There’s definitely some acting in church, which is one of the reasons I don’t go anymore,” she said. “I just didn’t really like being around people who seemed like they were performing.”

The statement might sound hypocritical for someone who makes her living standing three feet above a worshipful audience each night, but the same apathy that Dacus applies to her song structure applies to her persona on tour.

“The easiest thing to do is be myself. If there’s any ‘character,’ it’s me,” she said.

Sometimes compared to fellow Matador label mate and sad-girl singer Julien Baker or quirky solo artist Courtney Barnett, Dacus said she doesn’t feel musically similar to either artist.

She’s so comfortable in her own mind and music that Dacus couldn’t emulate anyone else if she tried.

That level of trust in herself extends to her small inner circle, including “Historian” producer Collin Pastore and band guitarist Jacob Blizard, both of whom she befriended long before her music took off.