Lucy Dacus @ Black Cat - 3/22/2019
Lucy Dacus at Black Cat (Photo by Mauricio Castro / @themauricio)
From her 2016 debut album No Burden to now, Lucy Dacus has taken her talents from Richmond, VA to the rest of the world in very quick order. It’s not hard to see why - starting with her 2016 single “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” to sophomore album Historian, Dacus has proven to be a voice that highlights insecurities, joys, love, and loss succinctly and honestly. Not only has her solo output been impressive, but her role in the supergroup Boygenius (alongside Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers) has raised her profile even higher than before.
Dacus is nothing if not a musical workhorse, so she opened and closed her sold-out Black Cat performance with as-of-yet unrecorded songs and asked the crowd not to record them, but it’s safe to say that her penchant for telling remarkable stories is still as strong as ever. She also made more than a few longtime fans happy with two song requests, No Burden’s “Map On a Wall” and “Trust.” The crowd emotionally belted out the words just as loudly as the loudspeakers in the room. At one point, Dacus exclaimed, “I feel like I’m singing karaoke right now!” As the band slowly crescendoed towards the final chorus of “Night Shift,” the crowd rapturously sang along with countless arms raised in the air for an unforgettable moment. Her Black Cat performance (and her US tour closer) was an impressive display as her parents and family watched from the side of the stage. And what better way to end a tour than that?
Lucy Dacus’s latest single “La Vie En Rose” is out now through Matador Records.
Opening for Lucy Dacus were Mal Blum (with the quote of the night, “Casper is a trans ghost now, it’s canon. Look it up.”) and Fenne Lily. Mal Blum’s latest single is “Things Still Left to Say” through Don Giovanni Records, and Fenne Lily’s self-released debut album On Hold is out now.
