LUCY DACUS
Hotly-pursued Virginia singer-songwriter-rocker opens her heart to “posi-nihilism”.
“IT’S SO CATHARTIC WHEN PEOPLE SCREAM ALONG.”
“Ithink people are thirsty for honesty, something earnest and genuine,” reckons Lucy Dacus. “If there’s a trend right now, it’s content-driven.” Nadia Reid, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, The Weather Station: it’s a particularly female-fronted trend too, a style of singer-songwriter-emo that burns and soothes at the same time. But it was Dacus alone who was chased by 20 labels, majors included, after her 2016 debut No Burden landed. In the event, Matador (long-time supporters of Dacus’s beloved Yo La Tengo) has released her new album Historian, a smouldering, sometimes-’90s alt-rock take on the open-heart approach, iced by Dacus’s gorgeous, languid alto. As her tour van heads into Manhattan to pick up albums from Matador to sell at tonight’s show in Philadelphia, Dacus talks about Historian’s title, inspired by her love of keeping a journal. “I think it’s more the act than the journal itself,” she sighs. “But words in my head take up space, and they come out as ink. If I didn’t think about home, it would disappear… it’s how I stay in touch with where I’m from and what I care about.” She hails from Mechanicsville, a cornfield-ringed suburban idyll outside Richmond, Virginia. “Suburbia’s the perfect place for angst to appear,” she avers. Other key influences were a religious upbringing (today, she vilifies “religion as politics” and “hate in God’s name”) allied with the freedom to absorb her parents’ Bowie, Springsteen and Prince records. Yet Dacus went her own way. “I rediscovered an old songbook,” she says, “and my first songs had the same goals as now – trying to cultivate understanding, honesty and hope, but also acknowledge the darker side of life.” Despite her musical talents, Dacus chose a film studies degree. But to make films, she admits, “I had to trust others to do it exactly how I wanted. A song feels more personal and direct, and I can write it on my own.” Still, she needed assistance – and encouragement – to start recording: her friend, guitar student Jacob Blizard, asked if Dacus had enough songs he could play on, to fulfil a college project, which became No Burden. Blizard, whose creamy tones gives Dacus much of her alt-rock glow, remains her go-to guitarist, a member of what she calls “The Lucy Dacus Show”, currently selling out every night. “The best part is when I get to scream at the end of [Historian opener] Night Shift, it’s so cathartic when people scream along! But the message is where I put most of myself. I call it ‘posi-nihilism’. Nothing matters, everything you care about will decay, but on that foundation, you can still build meaning, and find fun and beauty. I think it’s a healthy way to look at the world.”
Lucy Dacus plays the Green Man Festival in August