Lucy Dacus is the sound of young love.
I know this because as soon as Dacus—one-time Philadelphian, one-time boygenius—began to play this homecoming show at the Met, every early-aged coupling of women around me wrapped their arms around each other. Before the night ended on the back-to-back punch of winsome boygenius anthem “True Blue” and Dacus’ lengthy, provocative “Night Shift” (with its “first time I tasted somebody else’s spit, I had a coughing fit” intro), I walked around the Met to see young girls with their heads on each other’s shoulders and/or tightly holding hands.
It’s not impossible to get the whys and wherefores of Lucy Dacus on young queer audiences steeped in the currency of empathy and advocacy. Dacus is what she speaks of: a proudly out woman who extends her hand, always, to those whose shoes she has forever filled and their friends.
Adulation, obsession, identity and romance—come and gone—was Dacus’ lyrical stock-in-trade this night. (And pretty much, always.) Before wallpapered parlor backgrounds and the backing of five musicians quick to thickly layer atmospheric keyboards (“Big Deal”), flickering violins (“Ankles”) and strummy, thumpy pacing (the long, slow intro of “Calliope Prelude”), Dacus’ brand of chiming, charming melody and smartly emotional lyrics unfurled in a hushed, but pointedly forceful voice.
“Kookoo bananas” to be performing her first full solo shows since 2022, Dacus let go of self-consciousness on an acoustic take of “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” and etched a skeletal, poetic portrait of love’s first throes through the art pop of “Modigliani” with awe-struck lyric “You’ve made me homesick for places I’ve never been before/How’d you do that?”
How’d you do that, indeed.
Dacus moments as such are so intimate and conversational, you could miss their theatricality. With its playfully melancholy piano line dancing with a violin’s squeal, “Limerence” was pure drama made more magnificent by lyric “I’m thinking about breaking your heart someday soon/And if I do, I’ll be breaking mine, too,” all while “taking hits from a blunt, high as a kite.”
Boom.
Dacus and Co. kept the party polite and close-for-comfort passionate on “Bullseye” (with guest vocalist Katie Gavin), “For Keeps” and throughout the dedicatedly romantic “Partner In Crime,” “Most Wanted Man” and the title track of latest album Forever Is A Feeling, which seemed a particularly poignant moment for its audience despite its newness. Young girls who attended Dacus’ show together seemed to pull each other closer as she sang its chorus: “This is bliss, this is hell/Forever is a feeling, and I know it well.”
She may be 29 now, but, with nearly 10 years of making albums and writing vividly realistic portraits in miniature of becoming, Lucy Dacus gets her audience because not so long ago, she was that audience.
Dacus’ audience also includes her Met show’s openers, Katie Gavin and jasmine.4.T.
Gavin, too, had a crazy closeness with this audience, even if—as she joked (I think?)—they may not have known who she was. If that was true, then Gavin (also the frontwoman of Muna) made that happen due to the weight and weightlessness of her songs, many of which had opulently dynamic bridges that both Lennon and McCartney would envy.
Fond of warped-sounding keyboards, twanging guitars, a swooshing nuanced set of vocals (that sound like pre-Fleetwood Mac Stevie Nicks singing 10,000 Maniacs demos) and the brushed-denim thrush of her own violin, Gavin’s songs about love’s acceptance or refusal (big melodic moments such as “Inconsolable” and “As Good As It Gets”) gave it good. And great. And, seriously, I’d go see Katie Gavin anytime and anywhere; she was that impactful.
Because, apparently, Lucy Dacus likes a show, she had an opening act for her opening act: trans British indie rocker jasmine.4.T.
jasmine.4.T supported Dacus on a past tour and is signed to her boygenius bandmate Phoebe Bridgers’ record label, Saddest Factory. This clanging, grouching guitarist and scuffed, scruffy vocalist, accompanied by a violinist, had all the emotion and force of a young Elliott Smith as she sang out lyrics about showing her divinity and looking for queer friendship and love with “you” as her “morning.” The punkish likes of “Skin On Skin” and “Elephant,” intoned with a tentative-yet-powerful voice to the backing of sweet, sad violin, managed to be both brutal and beautiful all at once.
Nice show.
—A.D. Amorosi; photos by Danielle Ciampaglia/Shaky Cam Press
