When Lucy Dacus announced her fourth studio album, “Forever Is A Feeling,” I was a bit confused. The prospect of an album excited me– it’s Dacus’ first solo project since “Home Video” in 2021 and the breakup of her band boygenius, who captured the hearts of many through their 2023, Grammy-award winning album “the record.” Although Dacus’ previous projects received critical acclaim, boygenius helped bring her work to a much larger audience, raising the anticipation for her solo release to new levels. As thrilled as I was to be getting a new Dacus album, the title threw me for a loop. What does she mean, forever is a feeling, and how did she manage to come to that conclusion? I decided to let the songs speak for themselves, and they sure had a lot to say.
The instrumentals initially pulled me in. The opening track, “Calliope Prelude,” is enchanting, setting the stage with its violin melody. Grandiose arrangements that layer drums and guitars with pianos and harps throughout the album give it a fanciful feel. They matched beautifully with not only Dacus’ soft, floaty voice, but also the theme of love woven throughout the project. Nowadays, raw emotion in songs is nearly always volatile– take one of Dacus’ breakout hits, “Night Shift” off of 2018’s “Historian,” where she belts through her heartbreak. However, “Forever Is A Feeling” is marked by a signature softness, both in its instrumentals and its lyrics.
Throughout her album, Dacus is able to capture emotions so intimately it feels as though we’re intruding, almost as if the songs stole the lyrics from her when she wasn’t looking. The raw songwriting may seem to stand in stark contrast to elaborate orchestration, but the two actually meet at a sweet middle ground that feels both approachable and awe-inspiring. Her anecdotal writing style helps place the listener in Dacus’ shoes as they travel through the album, stepping into scenes of hotel stairwell fights and board rooms with cardboard cutout cowboys. “Modigliani” has to be one of my favorite tracks on the album lyrically. The collection of stories Dacus tells about her friend displays their relationship in the sweetest way, showing off her admiration for this person as well as the value she places on their friendship without feeling cliche at all. It’s made all the more sweet by the backing vocals of her boygenius bandmate, Phoebe Bridgers. When it comes to collaborators, though, Hozier undoubtedly steals the show with “Bullseye.” His voice melds together beautifully with Dacus’, helping to create one of the album’s strongest tracks.
Overall, the album addresses emotion without being caught up in a storm of melodrama, which allows the music to dig beneath the surface. Forever is a feeling– it isn’t real, not in a tangible sense. Yet, it still exists within all of us. Although time may be finite, the emotions we feel are not. How do these concepts coexist? Dacus’ album gives us a snippet into her answer to this question, most clearly in the lyrics to the closing track, “Lost Time”: “Nothing lasts forever, but let’s see how far we get / So when it comes my time to lose you / I’ll have made the most of it,” She toys with this concept throughout the album, but Dacus’ ultimate message is that love is a worthy endeavor, even if it can only be eternal in theory. Her point is also driven home by the fact that Dacus is having fun with this album. After three heart wrenching albums– plus three tear-jerking projects with boygenius– “Forever Is A Feeling” is a welcome breath of fresh air, with tracks like “Best Guess” giving Dacus’ discography a lighter, happier touch. “Most Wanted Man” is an especially happy listen due to the vocals of Julien Baker, Dacus’ bandmate and partner that likely served as a major inspiration for the album. It helps to usher in a new era of Dacus, one where she is in love without any strings attached, that may be her best era yet. Forever Is A Feeling is a stand out album that any fans of indie rock or pop will have on repeat.
