Description
Label Review.
2018 album. Also available on Vinyl
Our Overview.
Richmond VA based singer-songwriter is releasing her sophomore album ‘Historian’ and Lucy Dacus is done thinking small. Two years after her 2016 debut, ‘No Burden’, won her unanimous acclaim as one of rock’s most promising new voices, Dacus returns with ‘Historian’, a remarkably assured 10-track statement of intent. “This is the album I needed to make,” says Dacus, who views ‘Historian’ as her definitive statement as a songwriter and musician. “Everything after this is a bonus.”
‘Historian’ is largely a document of that upheaval, both the personal and political. It’s a reflection on what happens when the systems and safety nets that you believed were in place fail spectacularly and you’re left standing on your own. That despondency resulted in a resolve that ignited a spark in Dacus, and ‘Historian’ is more dynamic than her debut, sweeping and occasionally operatic and always painfully earnest. She uses her deft wordplay to look at the ways we learn to move on from tragedy, whether more interior battles like codependency or ones that impact on a more global scale. One of the tracks on ‘Historian’ is an incendiary protest song called “Yours And Mine” that was partially inspired by the 2017 Women’s March: “For those of you who told me I should stay indoors/ Take care of you and yours,” Dacus sings. “But me and mine, we’ve got a long way to go until we get home, ’cause this ain’t my home anymore.”
Dacus and her band recorded the album in Nashville last March, re-teaming with ‘No Burden’ producer Collin Pastore and mixed it a few months later with A-list studio wizard John Congleton. The sound they created, with substantial input from multi-instrumentalist and live guitarist Jacob Blizard, is far richer and fuller than the debut - an outward flowering of dynamic, living, breathing rock and roll. Dacus’ remarkable sense of melody and composition are the driving force throughout, giving ‘Historian’ the immersive feel of an album made by an artist in full command of her powers.