Lucy Dacus came out of the woodwork this year with her second full length album Historian, following up 2016’s No Burden. Dacus grew in the shadow of singer/songwriter Julien Baker, often opening up for her in the early days of her career. This facilitated Dacus’s quick rise to notability. Her first album was merely recorded by her friends and released by a local record label, but her prowess was noticed by Matador Records, who eventually re-released the album. Historian is more of the singer/songwriter goodness that appeared on No Burden, this time with even higher fidelity recording, and more thick developed instrumentation.
The feel of the record is easy to pick up right off the bat with the opening track “Night Shift,” featuring lines like “Am I a masochist? Resisting urges to punch you in the teeth, call you a bitch and leave.” This begins the long, emotionally abusive story Dacus explores throughout the ten songs on this LP. The track goes from slow strummed guitar into a raw breakdown at the end, with thick distorted electric guitar accompanying the refrain, “You got a 9 to 5, so I’ll take the night shift, and I’ll never see you again if I can help it. In five years I hope the songs feel like covers, dedicated to new lovers.” This song is a solid description of the entire LP, raw emotions hidden behind Dacus’s beautiful voice and sweet guitar melodies.
The track “Next of Kin” is one of the only upbeat songs featured on this record, where she comes to a sense of peace about her mortality, and the reality that we do not have infinite time in our lives. The chorus ends with the repeated line “I am at peace with my death, I can go back to bed.” This demonstrates how Dacus struggles with being an artist and living day to day. Compare to the song “The Shell,” where she sings “You don’t wanna be a creator. Doesn’t mean you’ve got nothing to say. Put down the pen, don’t let it force your hand.” For Lucy, she has trouble being consistently confident in herself as a person and a musician.
Though Dacus does attempt to spread herself out as an artist, she does have obvious influences, female vocalists like Nancy Sinatra and Amy Winehouse, and more modern artists like Lorde. Dacus incorporates the sound of these artists well, often giving them a more modern, indie rock vibe. The track “Body to Flame” reminds me of Vampire Weekend’s debut album, beginning with baroque pop flavored guitar plucking, which is eventually joined by pizzicato strings, which makes the song beautiful in an almost menacing way.
Dacus’s use of the strings is something that I wish she would explore more, using thicker instrumentation on more tracks. Songs like “Addictions,” one of my favorite tracks, feature a trumpet and trombone accompaniment, as well as this fantastic driving rim click/kick drum beat. Though Lucy’s voice is beautiful stripped down, the tracks where she experiments with distortion and thicker instrumentation stand out the most to me, and the album thrives when she works with those effects.
The album ends with “Historians,” an almost ambient song, where she sings alongside lone strings fading in and out, filled with reverb and dissonance. The song is a sort of send off to a relationship that needed to come to a close. She calls herself a historian as she looks though the photos and journals that hold the memory of the past love. In the final lines, she expresses confidence about her future self, while still feeling unsure about her ex-lover, singing, “If past you were to meet future me, would you be holding me here and now?”
by Peter Henderson