Image from Flickr
If you’re from Richmond or its surrounding suburbs, you probably know someone who knows Lucy Dacus personally. When I started listening to her music, one of my friends informed me that she took the bus with Lucy Dacus to school every day in Middle School. Needless to say, I could hardly believe it. After she released her first album No Burden in 2015 and was promptly signed to Matador Records, Lucy Dacus’ name is gaining popularity, and it’s no surprise.
Her first album made waves, first in Richmond and then nationwide, and her second album is already gaining momentum. In mid-December, Dacus announced that her second album Historian would be released on March 2nd of this year. She released the first single of the album, “Night Shift,” which Dacus has been performing since she went on tour in 2016.
“Night Shift” is written almost like two separate songs, with the melody subtly shifting halfway through the six minute track. Dacus says she wrote “Night Shift” as a breakup song, but it’s so much more than that – it’s a song about how feelings change over time and how memories that were once painful can take on entirely different meanings. In the end, it becomes an optimistic song about moving forward, in any way that you can.
Dacus released another single “Addictions,” the second track on her new album earlier this month, along with an accompanying music video. Dacus, a former film student at Virginia Commonwealth University, directed the video herself in Richmond, and much to my excitement, a lot of the Richmond landscape is recognizable in the background.
In the video, Dacus follows the story of a girl who finds a picture frame that she can use to see into a black and white past. She used the frame to circle back to a relationship that’s over, though it gives her an admittedly sentimental and unrealistic view of that past. The song tells the story about the difficulty of breaking free of addictive habits and relationships, which Dacus and her band do with a driving beat, a horn, and a sense of determination. Without a doubt, it’s the kind of song that would best be listened to while driving with the top down and the volume turned all the way up.
If her two singles are anything to judge by, Lucy Dacus’ second album is one to watch. I, for one, can’t wait to hear it!