A hell of a lot has changed since Lucy Dacus’ last solo album, 2021’s heavily autobiographical and hook-laden indie-pop record ‘Home Video’. Though Dacus and her Boygenius bandmates Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker had already made ripples with their self-titled EP back in 2018, few people could have predicted the impact their debut album ‘The Record’ would have a few years later. The Boys – as they are colloquially known – ended up sweeping the Grammys with three wins, including a gong for album of the year. Keen to bow out on a high, Boygenius went on hiatus just a year after ‘The Record’’s release.
Enter: Lucy Dacus’ fourth album, ‘Forever Is A Feeling’. Though there’s obvious overlap with the richly layered melodies of ‘The Record’, this trades in much of that album’s spikier moments for a grand, ornately-gilded chamber-pop sound. That much is clear from the moment that the sweeping strings of instrumental opener ‘Calliope Prelude’ – named after the Greek muse of eloquence and epic poetry – hum into life. Mostly an album about falling headlong into love, many of these songs are addressed to her Boygenius bandmate and partner Baker.
Dacus’ voice, steady, expansive and filled with warmth, has a nostalgic, old-timey quality, and she skewers the many sides of love – obsessive, gentle, precarious and unrealised – with observational scenes and unsteady first steps into unknown and risky new territory. “We both know that it would never work,” Dacus sings on the gently-strummed ‘Big Deal’, distantly yearning, “You’ve got your girl, you’re gonna marry her.” There’s also plenty of Dacus’ typically dry wit. “I missed your call because I was in a boardroom full of old men guessing what the kids are getting into,” she quips on ‘Come Out’.
These moments come alongside the overwrought statements people tend to make when they’re rapidly falling in love, and Dacus has fun playing with infatuation-fuelled hyperbole. Elsewhere on ‘Come Out’, she promises to scream obscenities and declarations of love so loudly that she risks never being able to sing ever again – a deliciously dramatic prospect. “The sidewalk’s paved with petals like a wedding aisle,” she ponders on closer ‘Lost Time’. “I wonder how long it would take to walk 800 miles, to say: I do, I did, I will, I would.”
Aside from a couple of heavier moments (indie-rock songs ‘Talk’ and ‘Most Wanted Man’), ‘Forever Is A Feeling’ sticks to a wistful, vaguely dreamy palette that mostly plays second fiddle to the lyrics. As you might expect with a topic as well-trodden and universal as love, some of Dacus’ turns of phrases feel like more familiar cliches. “I’m thinking about breaking your heart someday soon,” she sings on the spiralling and theatrical ‘Limerence’. Other lines are fairly plain and unadorned by Dacus’ standards but click into place effortlessly. “You were my best friend before you were my best guess,” she sings on standout ‘Best Guess’.
Though it exudes plenty of joy along the way, ‘Forever Is A Feeling’ doesn’t shy away from the more daunting aspects of being totally obsessed with somebody; “This is bliss, this is hell,” Dacus sings on the title track. “Forever is a feeling, and I know it well.” Though longing and mortality have long been recurring themes in Dacus’ music, the stakes feel even higher – and even more gripping – when there’s so much to lose.
