“Forever Is A Feeling” (Geffen Records)
By Eleni P. Austin
In 1992, k.d. lang released her fifth album, Ingenue. A sometimes angsty, sometimes playful, consistently pensive dissertation on longing and unrequited love. Musically, the album hewed more closely to Jazz chanteuse Julie London than k.d.’s longtime lodestar, the late, great Patsy Cline. The first single, “Constant Craving” was a surprise Pop hit that climbed to the top of the charts. The album peaked at #18 in the U.S. and garnered three Grammy nominations and one win for Best Female Pop Performance.
No mean feat for the Canadian singer and PETA activist who had recently confirmed the open secret that she was gay in an interview with the Advocate. A stunning admission, it lost her some fans, but her candor won her a whole lot more. For most of the 20th century, plenty of performers had remained in the closet, maintaining their loyal fan base, as well as the status quo. But k.d.’s bravery paved the way for a plethora of artists, including Melissa Etheridge, Rufus Wainwright, Sam Smith and Brandi Carlile, to be their authentic selves.
Fast forward 33 years later, and Lucy Dacus has something to say, something to add to the conversation. She’s in love, and she’s in love with a woman. In fact, the woman is critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Julien Baker who is also one-third of boygenius, the band she and Julien formed with Phoebe Bridgers. Actually, Lucy’s new album, Forever Is A Feeling, hinges on that declaration, and the world at large seems pretty okay with that revelation.
Born in 1995, Lucy was raised in Mechanicsville, a suburb of Richmond, Virginia. Her mom is a pianist and music teacher, her dad, a graphic designer. She began singing as a kid and was writing her own songs at age eight. Early influences included The Cure, Led Zeppelin, Fergie and All Time Low. She started writing in a journal in the sixth grade, and bought her first guitar (an Ibanez), off Craigslist before she finished Middle School.
By high school, she had immersed herself in the local music scene. The plan was to study film at Virginia Commonwealth University, putting her musical ambitions on hold. But rather quickly, she dropped out of college and decided to concentrate on making music full-time. She had already amassed 30 original songs when she went into the studio to record her 2016 debut, No Burden.
Originally released via the local Richmond label, Egghunt, the album attracted early buzz, prompting the Matador label to offer Lucy a deal. The respected indie then re-released the record on their own imprint. Critical acclaim was swift, soon enough, she was added to bills of prestigious festivals like Lollapalooza in Chicago and Amsterdam’s London Calling. She wound up opening for Julien Baker on her Sprained Ankle tour and Phoebe Bridgers was also added to the line-up. Around the same time, she outed herself during an NPR interview, saying “I’m kinda queer.”
2018 saw the release of her sophomore effort, Historian. It also marked the beginning of her collaboration with Julien and Phoebe. Forming the distaff super group, boygenius, the trio issued their eponymous EP that same year. Lucy’s third album, Home Video, arrived in 2021.
Two years later their official long-player, pithily entitled “The Record,” arrived. Embraced by fans and critics alike, it was a huge deal almost immediately. Suddenly they were the musical guest on Saturday Night Live and feted in the pages and on the cover of Rolling Stone. The three-piece recreated a classic early ‘90s cover that featured Nirvana in power suits. Critical acclaim was matched by massive sales, the album topped the charts worldwide, hitting #4 in the U.S. It also received seven Grammy nominations, winning three categories: Best Alternative Music Album, Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song. With her boygenius year behind her, Lucy has returned with her eagerly anticipated fourth album, Forever Is A Feeling.
The record opens on tip-toes with “Calliope Prelude,” a swirly string fanfare, it conjures up a surfeit of emotions before gracefully folding into “Big Deal.” Shivery, shape-shifter guitars, sinuous gamelan and a brushed beat mirror this tacit admission of mutual attraction: “You knew when you caught me reading at your show, I knew when you came to visit in the cold, we could’ve done something that we’d come to regret, do you remember? You say ‘how could I forget?’” Although prior commitments are in the way, possibility looms large: “And we both know that it would never work, you’ve got your girl, you’re gonna marry her, and I’ll be watching in a pinstripe suit, not even wishing it was me and you, so, what changes if anything? Maybe everything can stay the same, but if we never talk about it again, there’s something I want you to understand, you’re a big deal.” Such a big deal, she repeats it seven more times, imbuing each line with layers of ache and want and admiration ahead of a celestial wash of instruments.
Forever… is a song-cycle of sorts, but it doesn’t unfold in a linear fashion. Still, before carnal connections can be explored, current commitments must be managed. Four songs chart that course. “Talk” is powered by a taunting whistle, brittle, tenor guitar riffs, blurred bass lines and a kick-drum beat, Lucy’s vocals are swathed in shuddery backing vocals. The arrangement clanks and whirs with a mechanical grace, circling lyrics that acknowledge a relationship that’s merely going through the motions: “Why can’t we talk anymore, we used to talk for hours, do I make you nervous or bored, your body looming like a specter, hungry as a scythe, if you come reaping, I’ll come running, I still know what you like, but just like they say you can never go home, I could not love you the same way two days in a row.” The layered instrumentation operates as a shock-absorber, but it can’t truly cushion the blows.
On “For Keeps” the bare-bones arrangement leaves nowhere to hide. Plangent acoustic guitar wrap around Lucy’s tender croon as she lays her cards on the table: “We were not something, we were not nothing, we were in between things that make sense, but you wanted it, and that’s the only thing that mattered in the end/If the devil’s in the details, then God is in the gap in your teeth, you are doing the Lord’s work when you smile at me, I don’t believe in anything anymore except you and me, supremacy.” The last verse offers an epiphany of sorts: “But I still miss you, when I’m not with you, cause I know we’re not playing for keeps.”
Conversely, “Limerence” hedges it’s bets. A baroque piano ballad, it evinces the same bittersweet beauty as Billie Holiday’s epochal reading of “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” A torch song in the best sense, Lucy’s flowery vocal delivery echoes Rufus Wainwright’s rococo edge. Rather than acknowledge this “limerence,” this feeling of deep infatuation and romantic desire, lyrics are littered with distractions: “If I stay busy, maybe I’ll forget how I feel and go on living life as I planned it, so bring on the parties, I wanna go dancing my arm ‘round the waist of a friendly acquaintance, toeing the line of betraying your trust, why do I feel alive when I’m behaving my worst?” But subtext can’t be denied. As dissonant violins swoop across rippling piano with a courtly elegance, the lyrics can’t sidestep duplicity: “Is there a difference between lying to you if it feels just as bad as telling the truth? I know that there is, and I know what I’ll pick, I want what we have, our beautiful life, but the stillness, the stillness might eat me alive.”
With “Bullseye” the break-up is presented as a fait accompli. Jangly guitars are matched by tremulous synths, moody keys, Moog bass, keening gamelan and a snare drum kick. A conversation between exes, Lucy is joined by Irish singer-songwriter, Hozier. Their back-and-forth is affectionate and free of enmity: “I’ll miss borrowing your books to read your notes in the margins, the closest I came to reading your mind, the answers to the questions only made more questions, I hope you’re never fully satisfied, but I wanted to be there the day you figured it all out, whoever it is, I hope they’re proud” Their voices intertwine on the chorus: “You’re a bullseye and I aimed right, I’m a straight shot, you’re a grand prize, it was young love, it was dumb luck, holding each other so tight we got stuck.”
Shakespeare said, “to thine own self, be true,” and Lucy seems to heed that advice, beginning with the title track. Tinkling piano notes gambol across cello’d-out synths, tensile bass and an akimbo beat. A richly detailed narrative slowly unfurls as the arrangement gathers speed: “This is bliss, this is hell, forever is a feeling and I know it well.” Lyrics take care to navigate the speed bumps on this rocky road to romance: “I’m no good at faces or names, places or dates, zip codes or time zones, but I remember everywhere we’ve been and when, I remember thinking you were pretty when we met, I’m reading you like road signs, tell me where to go, my wrists are in your zip-tie. twenty-five to life, why not?” It’s a bit of a cosmic exhale when she reiterates “this is bliss,” aided and abetted by her boygenius mates, the vocals are equal parts angular and curvaceous. A floodgate of emotion cascades across clickity-clack percussion and bloopy synths on the instrumental coda.
The record turns a corner with both “Modigliani” and “Come Out.” The former is a twitchy treatise on wanting what you can’t have. Jittery bass lines connect with wheezy synthesizers, strumming guitar, mercurial piano and a trap kit beat. Lyrics limn the heady sensation of surrendering to fate and recognizing where your heart lies: “I should know my neighbors’ names, I should not stay up so late, Modigliani melancholy got me long in the face, but I feel better when you call, just to tell me how you are, how’d you do that? How’s tomorrow so far? You make me homesick for places I’ve never been before, how’d you do that, how’s tomorrow so far?”
On the latter, shimmering guitars, lush celesta, playful toy piano, thrumming bass and airy harp notes are wed to a stuttery beat on this breezy waltz. Lucy’s wry sense of humor is on full-display from the very first verse: “I missed your call, because I was in a boardroom full of old men guessing what the kids are getting into, there’s a cardboard cutout of a cowboy in the corner, pointing his gun at my face, I don’t belong here, nobody does, except maybe those old men collecting dust, why am I not wherever you are? There is no distance that wouldn’t be too far, even on the opposite side of the room, I am orbiting you.” The whole song is a rambling run-on sentence that is by turns wide-eyed, quixotic and quite assuredly romantic. It’s all so enticing: “So, come out, come out wherever you are, I miss you, I miss you, I miss you in my arms, come out, come out, there’s no need to hide, I want you, I want you, I want you by my side, come on, come on, I’m ready for you, I can wait, I can wait, but I don’t want to.”
Finally, the best songs on the record chronicle the point where love and lust finally converge. There’s a giddiness to “Ankles” that can’t be denied. Sawing cello partners with a heartbreak beat, willowy guitars and roiling bass. Lucy draws the lines of demarcation, only to erase them immediately: “What if we don’t touch, what if we only talk about what we want and cannot have? And I’ll throw a fit if it’s all I can do, if it’s the thought that counts, let’s think it through, so bite me on the shoulder and pull my hair, and let me touch you where I want to, there, there, there, there, there.” Each “there” is punctuated by a squiggly guitar riff that seems to signal concupiscence. Ahead of the bridge, frolicsome guitars dart through the mix and the chorus is simply irresistible (but not in a louche, Robert Palmer way): “Pull me by the ankles to the edge of the bed, and take me like you do in your dreams, I’m not gonna stop you, I’m not gonna stop you baby, I want to you to show me what you mean, then help me with the crossword in the morning, you are gonna make me tea, gonna ask me how did I sleep.”
Then again, there’s something to be said for delayed gratification. The drowsy satisfaction of “Best Guess” drills down on that magic moment when familiarity breeds contentment. Meandering guitars line up next to feathery celesta, pointillist keys and a laid-back shuffle beat. Lucy unfurls a heartfelt soliloquy that splits the difference between the sensual: “Tracing your tan lines, making you mine, if this doesn’t work out, I’ll lose my mind, and after a while, I will be fine, but I don’t wanna be fine, I want you, you, you are my best guess for the future, you are my best guess, if I were a gambling man, and I am, you’d be my best bet,” and the spiritual: “Here is the church, here is the steeple, you were looking for saints, but you found people, ain’t that just the way, I guess? I watched you fall from grace, it was graceful, after all, it’s a small world, you may not be an angel, but you are my girl, you are my pack a day, you are my favorite place, you were my best friend before you were my best guess for the future.”
Finally, “Most Wanted Man” is the album’s most rollicking track. Swiveling guitars lattice woozy pump organ, sinewy bass lines and a chunky beat. Beatitude and gratitude collide on this loquacious ramble, unspooling with the agility of a Parkour combatant: “I still believe in God sometimes, it always takes me by surprise to catch myself in the middle of praying, but I thank God for you when I don’t know what else to do, don’t know where the words go, but I still say ‘em/If it’s not God, it’s fate, if it’s not fate, it’s chance, if it’s my chance, I’m gonna take it, cause who gets the chance like the one I have here? To catch the most wanted man in West Tennessee, if you let me write the book, open the hood and take a look, I promise anything you give me is something I will keep, we can burn it when it’s done, soot and cinder in the sun, nothing left to read and weep.”
The record closes with “Lost Time.” Sun-dappled guitar chords brush up against gossamer keys, burnished piano, flinty bass lines and a ticklish beat. Lyrics are laced with regret and defiance: “I wonder how long it would take to walk 800 miles, to say I do, I did, I will, I would, I’m not sorry, not certain, not perfect, not good/But I love you and every day that I knew and didn’t say is lost time, now I’m knockin’ down your door cause I’m trying to make up for lost time.” It’s a plaintive finish to a transformative record.
Lucy cycles through moments that are swoony, cerebral, intimate and unguarded. There’s a specificity and wit to language that evokes comparisons to giants like Joni, Bob and Leonard. Yes, it’s that good, and it cuts to the quick. When done correctly, music has the power to take your breath away. Forever Is A Feeling will leave you breathless.
