Forever Is a Feeling and it’s Lucy Dacus’s new album
An in-depth review from Ebun Lawore.
By Ebun Lawore
The stakes were high for the release of Lucy Dacus’s fourth album. She was coming off of the massive success of boygenius, led by her, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker. The three of them went on a massive tour after releasing The Record in 2023, and they even took home three awards at the 2024 Grammys. So after all of that success, it makes sense that people expect a lot from her latest album, Forever is a Feeling. This album is not only her first album post-boygenius success, but it is also her first album under a major record label, and her first album after confirming her relationship with her band member, Julien Baker. Somehow, under all of this pressure, Dacus still managed to create an incredible record.
This album can truly be described as a body of work. After listening to it multiple times in order, it feels almost criminal to rip any of these songs away from the record, just to put them in a vaguely titled “sad music playlist.” Every song blends so perfectly together and tells an incredibly cohesive collection of stories about Dacus' past and present romantic experiences. The album begins with “Calliope Prelude,” a collage of violins that seems chaotic at first, but transitions seamlessly into “Big Deal,” a song about the weight of leaving the love you have for someone in the past. Dacus captures that feeling perfectly with her genius lyricism and instrumentation. As she sings, “Flicking embers into daffodils / You didn’t plan to tell me how you feel,” the music twinkles behind her voice, so much so that you can’t even describe it as a specific instrument. The song is a perfect prerequisite to “Ankles,” a song about a person that she currently very clearly wants. She begins by saying “What if we don’t touch? What if we only talk.” In this song, Dacus seems ready for a new beginning, and you can hear this in the playfulness of the instrumental. Next is “Limerence,” a song that I didn’t like when it first came out as a single. But after hearing it so perfectly placed within the album, I finally realize it's perfection. This song is one of the most lyrically and musically emotional songs on the album. It’s almost as if Dacus’s only goal was to tug at the audience's heartstrings by combining the lyrics “I’m thinking about breaking your heart someday soon / And if I do I’ll be breaking mine too,” with the distant cry of a violin. Or by echoing the melody of “a beautiful life” with a grand piano. You can feel Dacus’s guilt of being with someone that she doesn’t love in the music, but also within the gaps of silence. She then goes into “Modigliani,” the only song on the album that isn’t about romance. Dacus is actually singing about her friendship with her bandmate Phoebe Bridgers, who appears in the background vocals of the song. I love how Dacus describes the feeling of being so far away from someone you love. She asks Phoebe as she’s traveling in Japan, “How’s tomorrow so far?”
Next is “Talk,” which begins with my favorite sound on the whole album. Dacus does a quiet off-key whistle before going into the intense indie-rock instrumental that accompanies this song. This song is probably the loudest on the album, contradicting the fact that it is literally about sitting in silence with someone that Dacus used to talk to. Dacus doesn’t really let us be a part of the awkward silence that she describes, but rather puts us within the anger and frustration in her own head, while belting, “Why was our best sex in hotels, and our worst fights in their stairwells?” Dacus then goes on to “For Keeps,” and perfectly describes the feeling of being in love but not officially with someone. The song is quiet, and highlights her incredible lyricism, with lines like “If the devil is in the details, then God is in the gap of your teeth.” Finally, we’ve arrived at the title track. The song begins much more pop and upbeat than other songs on the album, and it initially threw me off. The song varies in styles of music, going from sounding like pop, to indie, to rock, and then it finally all comes together. It feels like Dacus is meant to portray the feeling of forever by playing everything all at once. And once I listened to the song with that perspective, I began to understand it better. She then moves on to “Come Out,” a song that is so light but lovesick. Dacus describes how in every random moment in her life, she just wants to be with her lover. But the magic within the prancing xylophone under her calming vocals convinces the listener of the magic that exists when Dacus finally is with her lover.
Dacus continues expressing this same love in “Best Guess”. The lyrics hold that same emotion, saying “you are my pack a day, you are my favorite place.” But at this point in the album, the lyrics seem to become more and more specific to her current partner, Julien Baker. Dacus then takes one more look back into the past with “Bullseye,” featuring Hozier, whose voice blends so beautifully with Dacus’s. In this song, she describes her past love as “young love” and “dumb luck”, diminishing its importance. You can tell that she is so ready to fully embrace the love of her present, and she then expresses that in “Most Wanted Man.” In this song, Dacus does not hold back. The song is so clearly about Julien Baker. It begins with an exciting country lick, and Dacus for the first time describes the ways that Baker shows love back to her, confirming that this love is officially mutual. She describes ways that they express their love to one another, and towards the end you can hear Baker sing background vocals before Dacus describes her as “the most wanted man in Western Tennessee.” The album then dies down in the final song, “Lost Time.” The song begins slow and emotional, and Dacus describes her regret for every moment she didn’t express her love for Baker. The song grows into an intense rock ending, in which she describes how she notices every minute detail about Baker. Her love is so raw and apparent, and when the song ends you feel as if you completely understand her.
Lucy Dacus truly is an artist. She has a unique ability to use music to make her listeners feel what she is feeling, and this ability shines through in “Forever is a Feeling”. She knows how to be so specific, yet completely relatable. The stakes were high for Forever is a Feeling and Dacus blew everyone away.