Come one, come all to the premiere of ‘Home Video,’ Lucy Dacus’ bold and brave documentary (and third album).
Stream: ‘Home Video’ – Lucy Dacus
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It has been three years since we’ve heard from Lucy Dacus. She left us with Historian in 2018, food for relational thought inked in gossamer pen. Now she gives us Home Video, a collection of the confidential and the cosmic (out June 25, 2021 via Matador Records).
Home Video sees Dacus use hindsight to its full potential, both in a distracted thought during a pastor’s sermon and a moment in the backseat of a friend’s car. Blame it on the underdeveloped frontal lobe or youthful optimism, but, Dacus’ superpower is the ability to capture a moment and its emotions.
Being back here makes me hot in the face
Hot blood in my pulsing veins
Heavy memories weighing on my brain
Hot and heavy in the basement of your parents’ place
You used to be so sweet
Now you’re a firecracker on a crowded street
Couldn’t look away even if I wanted
Try to walk away but I come back to the start
We begin with Dacus’ best venture at indie-pop to date, “Hot & Heavy.” The track charms with its cinematic lyricism pulsing guitar. A sense of disconnect glues every track together. Dacus feels stifled — by religious extremism, potent anxiety, queer identity.
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“Cartwheel” is a canticle that moves like thistledown. The track is sandwiched between “VBS” and “Thumbs,” and its light harmony makes for a stunning contrast. Dacus’ voice swings back and forth between the carefully plucked guitar and blanket strings. The lyrics make your junior year stomach drop, as Dacus remembers, “When you told me ‘bout your first time, A soccer player at the senior high, I felt my body crumple to the floor, Betrayal like I’d never felt before.” Dacus mourns with half-hearted confusion, as she remembers a vow to “build a house of twigs and vines, grow old together just to pass the time.”
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Masochistic tendencies are here to stay with “Thumbs.” We have seen this side of Dacus before, namely with “Night Shift.”. Dacus is first and foremost a friend, then a stress ball, finally a sounding board for a distressed daughter. Is there a world in which this birth father confronts his mistakes and apologizes with his head hung low?
Somewhere in the world there, is a father and a mother
And the father is a son, who has a mother
The mother has a daughter who gets married to the brother of a mother
And they all just tryna multiply with one another
‘Cause that’s just the way of the world
It never ends till the end, then you start again
That’s just the way of the world…
Somewhere in the world, they think they’re working for themselves
They get up everyday to go to work for someone else
And somebody works for them and, so, they think they got it made
But they’re all just working to get paid the very same
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Next, we head to Vacation Bible School with “VBS,” home of a summer filled with four chords and a single strumming pattern. Days were spent with “Hands above our heads, reaching for God,” because Dacus certainly didn’t feel Him there.
Along the tightrope of religion and relationship, she writes of a friend, “You say that I showed you the light, But all it did in the end, Was make the dark feel darker than before.”
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We end with “Triple Dog Dare,” as Dacus tells of an early experience with her sexuality. She admits, “I never touched you how I wanted to.” This song hones in Dacus’ signature sound and her laser-sharp penchant for storytelling. Dacus wants to run from this, not run away.
Home Video is an interaction, not an intervention.
This record makes me hope to run into Dacus at a party, to stand in the corner and laugh over the intensity of Catholic school memories. Enter Dacus’ world and move forward, one step and one memory at a time.
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:: stream/purchase Home Video here ::
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