Lucy Dacus - Home Video

This new gift from Dacus, her third album (which features vocal contributions from boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers), was built on an interrogation of her coming-of-age years in Richmond, VA. Many songs start the way a memoir might—"In the summer of ‘07 I was sure I’d go to heaven, but I was hedging my bets at VBS”—and all of them have the compassion, humor, and honesty of the best autobiographical writing. Most importantly and mysteriously, this album displays Dacus’s ability to use the personal as portal into the universal. “I can’t hide behind generalizations or fiction anymore,” Dacus says, though talking about these songs, she admits, makes her ache.

That Home Video arrives at the end of this locked down, fearful era seems as preordained as the messages within. “I don’t necessarily think that I’m supposed to understand the songs just because I made them,” Dacus says, “I feel like there’s this person who has been in me my whole life and I’m doing my best to represent them.” After more than a year of being homebound, in a time when screens and video calls were sometimes our only form of contact, looking backward was a natural habit for many. If we haven’t learned it already, this album is a gorgeous example of the transformative power of vulnerability. Dacus’s voice, both audible and on the page, has a healer’s power to soothe and ground and reckon.

Tracklist:
01 Hot & Heavy
02 Christine
03 First Time
04 VBS
05 Cartwheel
06 Thumbs

07 Going Going Gone
08 Partner In Crime
09 Brando
10 Please Stay
11 Triple Dog Dare