Album Review: Lucy Dacus - 'Forever Is A Feeling
‘Forever Is A Feeling’: love in its most enduring form.
Lucy Dacus’ highly anticipated fourth album Forever Is a Feeling is a love record to adulthood and relationships, and a noticeable departure from indie rock to a softer acoustic pop sound. It comes after the 2021’s critically acclaimed Home Video and 2023’s The Record, which brought wide commercial and industry success to Boygenius, her band alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker. Very similar to what Michelle Zauner did with her recently released record, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), this album, also co-produced by Blake Mills, sees Dacus taking a step back and reflecting on life, fame and most importantly, love.
It’s a quiet record filled with emotional honesty, always looking to find meaning in the peculiar, the still, and the small. Opening with “Calliope Prelude”, a brief instrumental that already signals her departure from grand statements, breaking her tradition of placing indie rock bangers as her album openers, “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” in 2016’s No Burden, “Night Shift” in 2018’s Historian, and “Hot & Heavy” in 2021’s Home Video. Followed by “Big Deal”, with lyrics reminiscent to 2021’s “Christine”. In this track instead of imagining the person she loves marrying someone who wouldn’t make them happy, Dacus doesn’t believe she could make this person feel that way, caring more about the subject being happy than she worries about losing them.
This is a collection of love songs, not the usual kind, but instead about everything and everyone that happens in between. “Ankles” and “Limerence”, the two lead singles, spiral with longing and doubt. “Ankles” is the album’s most physically charged moment, both sonically and lyrically, in which she imagines sensual and romantic scenarios with her partner. And on the beautiful highlight “Limerence”, Dacus captures the confusing feeling of being drawn to someone you shouldn’t love. She tragically sings: "I'm thinking about breaking your heart someday soon / And if I do, I'll be breaking mine too”
Forever Is a Feeling gains richness not by building up, but by stripping away. Take “Modigliani”, with Phoebe Bridgers on background vocals, in which she reflects on Phoebe’s life and their friendship, even referencing Bridgers’ “Garden Song” with the lyrics: “'Cause if it's what you want, you're gonna get it”. And “For Keeps”, a song about the comfort and fear of love as routine, as ritual, as maybe forever. Dacus sings with quiet conviction, but never certainty. An uncertainty that carries into the title track where gentle synths and echoing vocals blur the edges of time.
“Come Out” is another highlight, a brief but direct track that talks about queerness with a mix of tenderness and confrontation. The album’s one true duet, “Bullseye,” finds Dacus joining forces with Hozier, resulting in an interesting, if slightly uneven, collaboration. They sing about the luck and disbelief of finding love so early in life: “You're a bullseye, and I aimed right / I'm a straight shot, you're a grand prize / It was young love, it was dumb luck / Holdin' each other so tight, we got stuck”
“Most Wanted Man” and “Lost Time” close the record with a quiet crescendo. The former, which borrows background vocals from Julien Baker, leans into the mythology of romance, a fantasy where desire turns someone into a legend. And then “Lost Time”, which has the only real burst of sonic urgency in the record with an electric guitars outro that crashes into the mix like a storm.
As with her previous albums, Dacus’ lyrical strength lies in her details. She’s not writing love songs meant for everyone, but specific to her experiences. This level of detail doesn’t alienate, it invites and it's beautiful to hear, especially knowing who the songs are written for.
That said, It is a less immediate record than 2021’s Home Video. The hooks are subtler, the backgrounds quieter, and the scope narrower. Dacus isn’t chasing radio play or viral TikTok sounds, she’s inviting us into her current life. Ultimately, Forever Is a Feeling is about love in its most enduring form. With her artistic vision set on a quieter life, relationships, and the study of love, it results in her softest and most hopeful album yet.
Words by Marcos Sanoja
