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 thought as a solution to mirror the push and pull between curiosity and restraint within the tune. Additionally, she mentioned, “The tune is fairly attractive, so it’s not like I used to be going to recreate what occurs.”
For Dacus, frames have turn into a recurring motif. She used one in a video for a tune 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, “Perpetually Is a Feeling.”
“Framing is such an enormous a part of artwork,” Dacus mentioned. “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 “Perpetually 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 fashioned with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker — grew to an arena-size, Grammy-winning band. (Dacus just lately revealed that Baker is the topic of a kind of love songs.)
In a telephone 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-after-day. I began doing this perhaps 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 films to really feel like we obtained a way of their type. My highschool movie instructor confirmed “Nashville,” and it’s so darkish and it’s so humorous however it’s additionally so brilliant. Persons are speaking over one another, the dialogue is extra textural.
iPhone Voice Memos
I might be actually misplaced by way of 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 document 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 document is a voice memo of me enjoying by way of “Misplaced Time” for the primary time.
‘Survivor’
I’ve seen 43 seasons. Going from Season 1 and watching the evolution by way of time is only a distinctive expertise. You see how tv modifications, you see how society modifications. Even how folks strategy cameras. At first, nobody had social media; nobody was going to be an internet influencer. Not solely is the present entertaining, however it looks like a historical past lesson.
‘Therapeutic Again Ache’
I’ve two herniated discs. By means of 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 guide. I swear to you: I’ve not had a flare-up since studying it.
LePen Pens
There are LePen pen packs which might be coloration coded and once I journal, I’m going in coloration order. Or I’ll skip round. If I’m actually indignant, I’ll use a pink pen. I’ll have the colours match the tone of how I’m feeling.
SZA
God bless SZA. She’s simply among the best 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 type of like a “movie college bro” factor to say. However there’s actually nothing mistaken with it. The neon-soaked, contemplative, character-driven films — they’re one hundred pc 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 needs to be required in colleges. I had an period of simply studying his books chronologically after which I used to be like, I must cease as a result of I feel I’ll really feel so heartbroken once I’m performed along with his work.
My Movie Digicam
Julien obtained me a Contax T2 for my birthday. Generally 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.
