by Jamie Robash
photo by Dustin Condren
On her debut record, 2016 indie slack-rock opus No Burden, Richmond singer/songwriter Lucy Dacus conjured her power from the dour, playing on the Greek tragedian ideal of “laugh now, cry later.” Dacus gave both emotions plenty of screen time, doling out droll one-liners like: “I don’t wanna be funny anymore / I got a too short skirt, maybe I can be the cute one” and “without you I’m surely the last of my kind” with an eerie aplomb. This multifaceted mixture of emotions was hailed by critics and landed (after an intense bidding war by some of music’s most prominent labels) Dacus on much lauded indie label Matador, which released her sophomore effort Historian earlier this year. Though still only in her early twenties, Dacus again delves into tragedy head-on on Historian to document her sense of life’s brevity with bitterly titled songs like “Night Shift” and “Next of Kin.”
