Within the music video for “Ankles,” the primary single from Lucy Dacus’s fourth studio album, the singer performs a pleasure-seeking Victorian-era damsel that has escaped from a portray to gallivant round Paris. Her foil is a stern museum guard making an attempt to corral her again into her body.
Dacus got here up with the concept as a method to replicate the push and pull between curiosity and restraint within the music. Additionally, she stated, “The music is fairly sexy, so it’s not like I used to be going to recreate what occurs.”
For Dacus, frames have develop into a recurring motif. She used one in a video for a music from her second album, “Historian,” when she was a rising indie singer-songwriter. And she or he poses in a single on the album cowl for her newest LP, “Without end Is a Feeling.”
“Framing is such an enormous a part of artwork,” Dacus stated. “What are you placing within the confines of the body? What are you filling in time? What are you placing in entrance of individuals?”
The form of “Without end Is a Feeling” emerged when Dacus realized she was writing songs about love. (Then she wrote extra of them.) It’s her first solo album since boygenius — the indie-rock supergroup she shaped with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker — grew to an arena-size, Grammy-winning band. (Dacus not too long ago revealed that Baker is the topic of a type of love songs.)
In a cellphone interview earlier than flying to Paris to carry out, Dacus shared the cultural necessities that assist fill her life. These are edited excerpts from the dialog.
Sunscreen
I put on sunscreen day by day. I began doing this possibly a 12 months in the past, after I moved to Los Angeles. Each time folks go to my home, I’ve sunscreen for everyone.
Robert Altman Motion pictures
Final 12 months, me and my girlfriend had been selecting administrators and watching two or three of their motion pictures to really feel like we acquired a way of their model. My highschool movie instructor confirmed “Nashville,” and it’s so darkish and it’s so humorous however it’s additionally so vibrant. Individuals are speaking over one another, the dialogue is extra textural.
iPhone Voice Memos
I might be actually misplaced when it comes to songwriting if I didn’t have voice memo and notes apps proper subsequent to one another. After I’m busy and out and about, I’ll report a fast voice memo to get the melody and the lyrics collectively, but when I can’t make noise, I’ll go into my notes app. The final second of the entire report is a voice memo of me taking part in via “Misplaced Time” for the primary time.
‘Survivor’
I’ve seen 43 seasons. Going from Season 1 and watching the evolution via time is only a distinctive expertise. You see how tv adjustments, you see how society adjustments. Even how folks strategy cameras. To start with, nobody had social media; nobody was going to be a web based influencer. Not solely is the present entertaining, however it seems like a historical past lesson.
‘Therapeutic Again Ache’
I’ve two herniated discs. By the years, I needed to cancel excursions and journeys, and I used to be bedridden for six weeks at one level. I threw out my again the day earlier than a tour one time and I did a sofa tour. As a result of that was so public, folks got here out of the woodwork telling me to get this ebook. I swear to you: I’ve not had a flare-up since studying it.
LePen Pens
There are LePen pen packs which can be coloration coded and once I journal, I am going in coloration order. Or I’ll skip round. If I’m actually indignant, I’ll use a purple pen. I’ll have the colours match the tone of how I’m feeling.
SZA
God bless SZA. She’s simply the most effective songwriters working. I’ve been in since “Ctrl.” I equate her to Elliott Smith in that everybody who loves Elliott Smith thinks they’ve a one-on-one relationship to his music. Everybody that loves SZA that I do know is like, “SZA will get me.”
‘Paris, Texas’
In competitors as my favourite movie of all time. I do know that’s form of like a “movie faculty bro” factor to say. However there’s actually nothing mistaken with it. The neon-soaked, contemplative, character-driven motion pictures — they’re 100% indebted to it and but nobody has surpassed the sensitivity, complexity, the nuance and oddness of “Paris, Texas.”
James Baldwin
Everybody ought to learn “The Hearth Subsequent Time” — it must be required in faculties. I had an period of simply studying his books chronologically after which I used to be like, I have to cease as a result of I feel I’ll really feel so heartbroken once I’m accomplished along with his work.
My Movie Digital camera
Julien acquired me a Contax T2 for my birthday. Typically if I visitor on folks’s exhibits, I’ll take an image of them and the group, as a result of who else is getting them from that perspective? I took it to the Joni Mitchell present and I’ve an image of her and Elton John singing collectively backstage.