"Home Video" by Lucy Dacus

The album she's been writing her whole life

By: Sydney Hainy

Both a love letter to the past and a time capsule for the future, singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus returns to her awkward teenage years for new album, "Home Video." Dacus is a master storyteller as she recalls the painstaking experience of growing up, orchestrating a symphony of first times and first loves, deadbeat dads and confusing queer friendships, flushed cheeks and averted eyes. 

After quickly rising to fame in 2018 through supergroup "boygenius," alongside bandmates Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, she felt as though she must say something profound in her sophomore album, "Historian." Though, for her third album, she took a different approach. Using her old diary entries as reference, she walks the listener through 11 vignettes, each of which hold a memory from her youth that has grown to be significant over time. Her songwriting is honest and straightforward, and carries all the same emotions from when she first wrote about it in her diary, but with the insight of someone who has lived years past. 

Dacus gracefully speaks to the unique experience of growing up queer and Christian, and the guilt that comes along with it. We move from upbeat songs like "First Time," which blushes with naiveté, to the ballad, "Thumbs," crystallizing a white-hot flash of anger in time. Where her words are kept simple, Dacus counters with experimental production. The album plays around with heavy synths, 12-string guitars, and even autotune to stylistically act as a mask in "Partners In Crime." Through a series of confessions, Dacus ultimately is telling her younger self everything will be okay, and asks us to do the same.