Forever Is A Feeling - Lucy Dacus

Lucy Dacus makes a graceful return to the indie folk spotlight this March with Forever is a Feeling, a tender exploration of love and longing. Aimee Goldblum delves into the album’s delicate and emotional landscape.

Lucy Dacus’ fourth studio album Forever is a Feeling marks her major label debut, released

with Geffen records, and offers a more understated entry into her catalogue. It comes in light

of Dacus’ relationship with Boygenius bandmate Julien Baker, a romance revealed a week

preceding the album’s release. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Forever is a Feeling

encapsulates a quiet, intimate atmosphere, as opposed to Dacus’ previous angst-driven hits

like Night Shift or Hot & Heavy. For fans of this style, Forever is a Feeling may be a little

underwhelming - the slow, building tension giving way to powerful outros that Dacus has

perfected are few and far between here, instead favouring light and airy instrumentation.

Dacus is in love, and she lets us know it.

We open with Calliope Prelude, an orchestral affair that sets the listener up for a more

dramatic experience than what we are offered. It leans further into the ethereal than other

tracks of similar ilk (such as contemporaries The Last Dinner Party’s Prelude to Ecstasy),

but still doesn’t necessarily match the laid back, stripped production of the rest of the album.

Calliope Prelude falls more in line with the Renaissance promise of the album cover, with

gorgeous layered violins warming up, building to ostensibly something big. Dacus then

brings the energy down into Big Deal, a track that, while not continuing expectations built up

previously, feels quintessentially Lucy Dacus, a lyrically expansive number musing on the

importance of a relationship - presumably with Baker, who lends her vocals to multiple songs

on the album. Big Deal is almost a more effective opening than Calliope Prelude, both

instrumentally, with its relaxed drums and acoustic guitars, and lyrically. Forever is a Feeling

is, front to back, about knowing you’ve found ‘the one’. And that, for Dacus, is a big deal.

"Across Forever is a Feeling, Dacus rejects melodic songwriting in favour of developing her lyrical talent - this leads to a few tracks veering on the side of monotony"

Our first taste of Forever is a Feeling was Ankles, performed on The Tonight Show starring

Jimmy Fallon before its studio version premiere the following day. Ankles encapsulates

both the good and bad of the record. It’s intimate, as all the tracks feel, with Dacus’ vocals

produced in a way that feels like she’s whispering right into your ear. It also delivers the

contentment that threads its way across the album, presenting us with a very domestic

vision. This, like in reality, can become somewhat lacklustre. Ankles is fun, but melodically,

it drags in places. It feels a little repetitive, with perhaps not enough substance to fill its

almost four minute run time. Dacus followed up the release of Ankles with Best Guess, a

similarly plodding number. There’s a lot to enjoy about both singles, but are ultimately shown

up by some more invigorating deep cuts.

For fans of her older work, Dacus provides Talk, a personal highlight. Her alto range, which

makes her such a key component of Boygenius, shines here, and allows her to create that

steady increase in intensity that characterises her best output. By the end of the song,

Dacus is belting out ‘do I make you nervous? Or bored?’, giving power to a relatively simple

lyric - this is Dacus at her best. Across Forever is a Feeling, she flexes her writing muscles in

ways she hasn’t before, penning intricate lines like ‘your body looming like a spectre/hungry

as a scythe/if you come reaping, I’ll come running’ on Talk, and bitingly unembellished lines

like ‘I love your body/I love your mind/They will change/So will mine’ on Best Guess. At

times, Dacus seems to be borrowing from fellow Boygenius member Phoebe Bridgers’ style,

a listing of sensory detail seen on Forever is a Feeling. While Forever is a Feeling is, in

many ways, a departure from Dacus’ previous solo work, traces and echoes of her work with

the supergroup are littered throughout the record.

"Dacus is in love, but that’s not really the point. It’s the knowledge that, like the title, forever is only a feeling"

For example, Limerence sees Dacus at her most Boygenius, and her most melodically-

inclined. Across Forever is a Feeling, Dacus rejects melodic songwriting in favour of

developing her lyrical talent - this leads to a few tracks veering on the side of monotony.

Limerence is a strong exception here, leading the listener through more complex harmonic

structures, rotating between keys effortlessly. The melodies then follow. It’s a track akin to

Dacus’ writing on the critically acclaimed the record, transposing the conversationalist nature

of Leonard Cohen.

Aside from her bandmates Bridgers and Baker, Dacus employs the vocals of Hozier on

Bullseye, a somewhat disappointing entry into her collaborative catalogue. His presence on

the song feels a little disjointed, unexpected in a jarring way. Hozier as an artist is a vocal

powerhouse, as opposed to Dacus’ intimate tone. In theory, this combination should work,

but here, Hozier seems a little toned-down to match Dacus, rather than utilising his belt

capabilities.

There are moments on Forever is a Feeling, that, due to the chilled production and the

backseat taken by melody-focused songwriting, that are a little slow. Songs like Come Out

and ‘For keeps’ demonstrate what fans of Dacus already know - she’s talented at spinning a

ballad - but don’t succeed on pushing any further than her previous output. They’re nice to

listen to a few times, but don’t tell us anything new we don’t already discover on more

sonically diverse moments on the album. On For keeps, we get the same uncertainty

already explored on Big Deal, and Come Out offers a reflection on all-encompassing love

that rings true throughout Forever is a Feeling.

"Across Forever is a Feeling, she flexes her writing muscles in ways she hasn’t before"

Dacus ends on a high with Lost Time. It’s the emotional centre of the record, the thesis

statement. Dacus is in love, but that’s not really the point. It’s the knowledge that, like the

title, forever is only a feeling. In reality, they have not had forever, as Dacus writes,

‘everyday that I knew and didn’t say is lost time’. The final track pulls together this sadness

of having wasted time on uncertainty that permeates songs like Big Deal and For keeps,

uniting it with the possibilities and quiet happiness of forever found on Forever is a Feeling

and Best Guess. And of course, we’re gifted with a classic Lucy Dacus cathartic outro to

round off the record.

Forever is a Feeling is a solid, if at times reiterative effort from Lucy Dacus, and while a

major label release can be inhibiting - which it certainly feels in places here - Dacus proves

that there’s still room to grow.

Aimee Goldblum

---

Edited by Harriet Bodle

Album cover photo courtesy of Lucy Dacus, photos courtesy of Lucy Dacus, Youtube video courtesy of Lucy Dacus