Following the release of her widely-acclaimed sophomore album, Historian and the collaborative boygenius EP with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus has spent this year rolling out a festive mix of original and cover songs tied to various holidays, resulting in the EP 2019.
From the poignant refrain of ‘My Mother and I’, to the spirited take on ‘Dancing In The Dark’, politically-charged lyrics of ‘Forever Half Mast’ and spooky atmosphere of ‘In The Air Tonight’, 2019 is a captivating body of work that foregrounds Lucy’s versatility as both a knockout cover artist and pre-eminent young songwriter voice of today.
Lucy Dacus – ‘Fools Gold’
Recorded in here-and-there studio spurts over the last two years, Dacus used her gift as a songwriter to help understand and cope with the world around her, including making sense of national holidays. “What is going on,” she asks herself on these days, retreating from heightened expectations to find her own meaning. “I’ve collected some songs from trying to answer that question,” she says, and “this series seems like the right place to put them next to each other. These songs are self-contained, not indicative of a new direction, just a willingness to do something different and sometimes even out of character.” Sped-up, amped-up and delivered through a megaphone to chugging abandon, Dacus’ reworking imbues the sweater-sporting classic with a spontaneous energy that turns it playfully on its head. “I don’t really like Christmas,” says Dacus. “In the studio, we listened to the original of ‘Last Christmas’ and didn’t talk about an arrangement. I just told everyone to play it angry. This is what happened first take. It actually came out pretty fun, maybe a tad psychotic.”
2019 has seen Dacus tour across Australia, Europe and North America, grace the stages of festivals including Primavera, Best Kept Secret and Hopscotch and make her Austin City Limits debut. She has recently penned op-eds for the New York Times and Vanity Fair, and expounded on the unique approach of the 2019 song series in a recent interview with Spotify For Artists.
Purchase / Stream Lucy Dacus 2019 EP: https://lucydacus.lnk.to/2019
RTR Feature Album
2SER Feature Album
The Guardian – Best Tracks Of 2018
Rolling Stone – Best Albums of 2018, Best Songs of 2018
Pitchfork – Best Rock Albums of 2018, Best Songs of 2018
Stereogum – Best Albums of 2018
Noisey – Best Albums of 2018
Billboard – Best Rock Albums of 2018
The Line Of Best Fit – Best Albums of 2018
Consequence of Sound – Best Albums of 2018, Best Songs of 2018
Slate – Best Albums of 2018
Lucy Dacus – 2019 EP
1. Fool’s Gold
2. La Vie En Rose
3. My Mother & I
4. Forever Half Mast
5. Dancing In The Dark
6. In The Air Tonight
7. Last Christmas
