Lucy Dacus
Recommended this month: Matador’s latest signing, a pithy indie-rock chronicler with fans in the Senate
When thieves broke into Lucy Dacus’s touring van and stole her backpack recently, the biggest loss wasn’t her computer or any gear. It wasn’t even her passport, although that presented some headaches. “The loss that hurt the worst was my journal,” says the Virginia musician. “even just talking about it is making the blood run to my face, but I have to remember that those things still happened even though the journal is gone. That time isn’t lost.”
Dacus is, by her own admission, a compulsive chronicler of her own life. She estimates she’s handwritten more than 2,000 pages in her multivolume journal covering almost all of her teenage and adult life. “I’ve always done it and I don’t think twice about why or if I should. It’s just an impulse that I have to give into.”
She also sets her thoughts down in other media: poetry, screenplays, the occasional personal essay. She went to film school and directs her own music videos.
Most popularly, she writes deeply personal songs distinguished by her nimble guitar-playing and expressive yet restrained vocals, earning comparisons to Julien Baker and Sharon Van etten. It’s fitting that her sophomore album is called
Historian, which might be a better job description for her than singer-songwriter. “I got the title from the last song on the album, which laments the fact that no matter how many photos we take of other people or however much journaling we do, the real person will go away. That makes me sad, but it keeps me grateful for my time with them.”
Just two albums into her career, Dacus has a lot to chronicle. In november 2015 she released her first single, an upbeat sad song called “I Don’t Want to Be Funny Anymore”, on the Richmond label egghunt Records. The response was immediate and overwhelming. “I got so many emails in my inbox after that first song came out. From that moment on, it took a different turn away from being a local project.” As if to illustrate that point, vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine listed her as a personal favourite during a 2016 campaign interview.
Dacus recorded her debut, No Burden, in a single day. “We didn’t think anyone would hear it,” she admits, but the wit and detail of her songwriting attracted a lot of attention well beyond her local scene, eventually leading to her signing with Matador Records.
That album’s success created high expectations for her follow-up – none higher than her own.
Historian expands her musical range, adding classic rock riffs to “Addictions” and cinematic strings to “Body To Flame”, but it also refines her songwriting. Dacus renders even the most common experiences – a bad break-up, for example, or the death of a grandparent – with specificity and gravity. On the opening track, “night Shift”, Dacus reveals her deepest wish for the music: “In five years I hope these songs feel like covers/Dedicated to new lovers.”
It’s a powerful moment by a new artist who doesn’t take for granted that she’ll still be playing shows in half a decade’s time.
“I think a lot about the timeline of this career. If I get to play for a long time, how will these songs feel? That’s why I go on tour, to share these songs that mean something to me and hopefully to other people while they’re at their most potent.”