With the release of her much-anticipated second album Historian heading our way on March 2nd, Lucy Dacus gives us another taste of what’s to come with a video for the anthemic and horn-accented upbeat new single ‘Addictions’.
Directed by Lucy herself, the video is a love letter of sorts to her native Richmond, VA, presented in its full fall glory. Our nameless protagonist walks, explores, and hitchhikes through Richmond, seeing the city through a picture frame that presents the world in black and white to those who look through it, while contemplating her past. The visual trick suggests a separation of reality & the present (colored world) and fantasy & the past (black and white), tying in the song’s theme of addictions in all their toxic forms — be it substances, relationship baggage, or old habits — and how they can be difficult to break.
“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.”
The past year, with its electoral disasters and other assorted heartbreaks, has been a rough one for many of us, Dacus included. She found solace in crafting a thoughtful narrative arc for Historian, writing a concept album about cautious optimism in the face of adversity, with thematic links between songs that reveal themselves on repeat listens — touching on everything from political unrest
to creative burnout to the death of her grandmother. “It starts out dark and ends hopeful, but it gets darker in between; it goes to the deepest, darkest, place and then breaks,” she explains. “What I’m trying to say throughout the album is that hope survives, even in the face of the worst stuff.”
Lucy Dacus plays the following UK & European Live Dates:
April:
19.04 Leeds, UK @ Belgrave Music Hall
20.04 Glasgow, UK @ The Hug and Pint
21.04 Manchester, UK @ Gullivers
22.04 Birmingham, UK @ Hare and Hounds 2
24.04 Bristol, UK @ Louisiana
25.04 London, UK @ Omeara
26.04 Brighton, UK @ The Hope and Ruin
27.04 Paris, FR @ Espace B
30.04 Copenhagen, DE @ Stengade
01.05 Hamburg, GE @ Prinzenbar
03.05 Cologne, GE @ Blue Shell
04.05 Amsterdam, NL @ Sugar Factory
14th-17.06 Dover, DE @ Firefly Festival