Two songs on Richmond-based singer/songwriter Lucy Dacus' debut album No Burden contain the same chorus: "Without you I am surely the last of our kind/ Without you I am surely the last of my kind." The songs, "Dream State..." and "...Familiar Place," seem to complete each other elliptically, and approach their shared lyric through two different paths; the first describes a flood, both emotional and physical, while the second finds its narrator crawling through a dead garden. Both choruses seem to obey the physics of dreams: people are lost irretrievably, landscapes shift from domestic to alpine. Dacus conveys the warm, human perspective at the center of this turning vortex, a person trying to survive the infinite flow of change.
No Burden is an uncommonly warm indie rock record. Lead guitar lines pour in like slow columns of sunlight, and Dacus' voice itself is a comforting blur. "I let my mind get turned inside out/ Just to see what the kids were laughing about," she sings on "Direct Address." "And it wasn't worth understanding/ Something I could've gone my whole life not knowing." Her perspective is sober and carefully composed, but the blur in her voice also gives her songs the casual, permissive dimension that usually slips in after two or three drinks. "I thought you'd hit rock bottom, but I'm starting to think that it doesn't exist," she sings in "Strange Torpedo." "You've been falling for so long and you haven't hit anything solid yet."
The record is full of these candid and severe observations. "I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore" describes the arthritic inflexibility of social roles. "Is there room in the band?" Dacus asks. "I don't need to be the frontman/ If not then I'll be the biggest fan." Dacus herself intended to study film before focusing on music; "I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore" and the rest of No Burden seems a product of this wavering and observational focus. The people in her songs seem to naturally settle into realms of instability and ambiguity.
Becoming "no burden" means exerting zero pressure on the world, suspending yourself in a sphere of your own consciousness, as if sealed into a dream. Of course, removing yourself from the world and others is its own inverse pressure. Your body, mind, and their obscure combinations will carry, shift, and broadcast weight from any position they take up in space. "If you hadn’t come over, I would be so much colder," Dacus sings in "Dream State…" "I would be much less confused." Everything, No Burden seems to suggest, is burden.
