Singer/songwriter Lucy Dacus has released her new album, Home Video via Matador. Featuring singles ‘Thumbs’, ‘Hot & Heavy’, ‘VBS’, and ‘Brando’, Dacus’ new album is now available on all digital platforms.
There are a thousand truisms about home and childhood, none of them true but all of them honest. It’s natural to want to tidy those earliest memories into a story so palatable and simple that you never have to read again. A home video promises to give your memories back with a certificate of fact— but the footage isn’t the feeling. Who is just out of frame? What does the soft-focus obscure? How did the recording itself change the scene? Some scrutinize the past and some never look back. Lucy Dacus, a lifelong writer and close reader, has long been the former sort.
“The past doesn’t change,” Dacus said on a video call during that interminable winter of video calls. “Even if a memory is of a time I didn’t feel safe, there’s safety in looking at it, in its stability.”
This new gift from Dacus, Home Video, her third album, was built on the interrogation of her coming-of-age years in Richmond, Virginia. Many songs start the way a memoir might—“In the summer of ’07 I was sure I’d go to heaven, but I was hedging my bets at VBS”—and all of them have the compassion, humour, and honesty of the best autobiographical writing. Most importantly and mysteriously, this album displays Dacus’ ability to use the personal as a portal into the universal. “I can’t hide behind generalizations or fiction anymore,” Dacus says, though talking about these songs, she admits, makes her ache.
Home Video is Dacus’ “most personal album to date, recounting her coming of age, in Richmond, Virginia. She sings about lost friendships, queer love affairs, curfews, and other adolescent pursuits” (New Yorker). It displays her ability to use the personal as a portal into the universe as the songs capture that specific moment in time growing up where emotions and relationships start becoming more complex — the joys, the excitement, the confusion, and even the heartbreak of going through the process of discovering who you are and where people fit in your life and where you fit in theirs. Dacus’ voice, both audible and on the page, has a healer’s power to soothe and ground and reckon.
Dacus’ rich, buttery voice commands both her thoughtful indie rock tunes and more intimate confessionals. Emerging from the thriving indie scene of Richmond, Virginia, in the mid-2010s, she broke through the blogosphere and onto major indie outlets with the lead single “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” from her debut album, No Burden (2016). It showcased the songwriter’s playful and also heartrendingly candid way with words. The critical success of the more dramatic follow-up Historian in 2018 was followed the same year by membership in Boygenius, a trio with similarly lauded indie up-and-comers Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers.
Home Video Tour:
Wed. June 23 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheater @
Thu. July 29th – Bethlehem, PA @ Levitt Pavilion SteelStacks !
Fri. July 30 – Worcester, MA @ Palladium !
Sat. July 31 – Queens, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium !
Fri. Sept. 10 – Richmond, VA @ The National &^^
Sat. Sept. 11 – Richmond, VA @ The National &% – SOLD OUT
Mon. Sept. 13 – Saxapahaw, NC @ Haw River Ballroom %
Tue. Sept. 14 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West %
Wed. Sept. 15 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl %
Fri. Sept. 17 – Dallas, TX @ Trees %
Sat. Sept. 18 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall- Downstairs %
Sun. Sept. 19 – Austin, TX @ Scoot Inn %
Mon. Sept. 20 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger %
Wed. Sept. 22 – Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole %
Fri. Sept. 24 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Theatre at Ace Hotel %
Sat. Sept. 25 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory OC +
Mon. Sept. 27 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore %
Thu. Sept. 30 – Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre $
Fri. Oct. 1 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom $
Sat. Oct. 2 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre $ – SOLD OUT
Tue. Oct. 5 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge $
Wed. Oct. 6 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater $
Fri. Oct. 8 – Iowa City, IA @ The Englert Theatre $
Sat. Oct. 9 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue $
Mon. Oct. 11 – Chicago, IL @ The Vic Theatre
Tue. Oct. 12 – Columbus , OH @ Newport Music Hall $
Thu. Oct. 14 – Toronto, ON @ The Opera House $
Fri. Oct. 15 – Montreal, QC @ L’Astral $
Sat. Oct. 16 – Boston, MA @ House of Blues $
Mon. Oct. 18 – Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground $
Wed. Oct. 20 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer ^
Fri. Oct. 22 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club $ – SOLD OUT
Sat. Oct. 23 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club #
Mon. Oct. 25 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel – SOLD OUT
Tue. Oct. 26 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
%= Bachelor supporting, $ = Bartees Strange supporting, ^ = Shamir supporting, #= Laura Stevenson supporting, ^^=Thao supporting, &= with Julien Baker, @=supporting Shakey Graves, !=supporting Bright Eyes, +=Miya Folick supporting
Praise for Lucy Dacus:
[Dacus is] one of the best songwriters of her generation. – Rolling Stone
‘Hot & Heavy’ begins in a synthesized glow…But it doesn’t take long for ‘Hot & Heavy’ to kick into a gallop, coming alive with chiming guitars and gleaming pop-rock flourishes that recall ‘Full Moon Fever’-era Tom Petty. – New York Times
So much of what I love about Lucy’s songs is how much wisdom and clarity there is in them. – NPR Music
she punctuates [‘VBS’] with all the right musical touches…and the music, in turn, responds, exploding into a brief, intense onslaught of distortion. – Pitchfork
when she pulls the trick of referencing Slayer and then cranking up the distortion for a few bars, it makes me want to close my eyes and lift my hands to the heavens. – Stereogum on “VBS”
Pictures by Daily Progress & Rolling Stone