It’s official, folks: New Lucy Dacus is on the way. The Richmond, Virginia singer/songwriter and boygenius member has announced one of Paste’s most-anticipated 2021 albums, detailing Home Video (June 25, Matador Records) and sharing the music video for its lead single, “Hot & Heavy,” which she’ll perform on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert tonight.
After turning heads with her 2016 debut No Burden and breaking out big with Paste’s top album of 2018, Historian, Dacus found a path to her musical future that led through her past. Home Video finds her taking a memoirist’s eye (or is it ear?) to coming of age in her Virginia hometown, revisiting her geographical and emotional roots—including both the changes she underwent growing up there, and the ones she’s experienced since her songwriting career took off (“people she didn’t know were looking at her like they knew her better than she knew herself,” a press release explains)—so as to wring the universal from the personal.
“I thought I was writing ‘Hot & Heavy’ about an old friend, but I realized along the way that it was just about me outgrowing past versions of myself,” explains Dacus in a statement. “So much of life is submitting to change and saying goodbye even if you don’t want to. Now whenever I go to places that used to be significant to me, it feels like trespassing the past. I know that the teen version of me wouldn’t approve of me now, and that’s embarrassing and a little bit heartbreaking, even if I know intellectually that I like my life and who I am.”
Dacus immerses herself in the past in her self-directed video for “Hot & Heavy,” shot in Richmond’s historic Byrd Theatre, where Dacus often saw movies as a teenager. “I knew I wanted to include some of the home video footage that my dad took of me while I was growing up. I wanted to visualize the moment when you first reflect on your childhood, which I think can also be the moment that childhood is over,” she explains. “For me, I feel like there was a hard switch when I started releasing music, when my identity went from being a personal project to something publicly observed and reflected. I asked my family (shoutout to my grandma) and some of my closest friends to be extras because they’re the people that knew me before that switch. I may have dropped out of film school, but I still love making movies and had a really fun time directing this one.”
“Hot & Heavy” begins as memories often do, quiet and indistinct, with only Dacus’ voice over gentle mellotron: “Being back here makes me hot in the face / Hot blood in my pulsing veins / Heavy memories weighing on my brain / Hot and heavy in the basement of your parents’ place,” she sings, focusing her mixed, yet visceral emotions on a specific person from her past, and acknowledging, “Try to walk away but I come back to the start.” There’s something about her home that’s always with her, like the blood in her veins, and it’s as if the song—jangly guitars, percussion pounding like a nervous teen’s heart—swells along with Dacus’ emotions, intensifying as she continues to dwell on it. Between this and “Thumbs,” the fan-favorite track Dacus released last month, it would appear she has another knockout album on the way.
Dacus recorded Home Video in Nashville in August 2019 (speaking of the past!) with her friends and collaborators Jacob Blizard, Collin Pastore and Jake Finch, and her boygenius bandmates Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker added vocals to two tracks. She’ll tour North America (pandemic permitting) this September and October in support of the record, kicking off her 28-date run with a two-night hometown stand alongside Baker and “special guests.” Bachelor (i.e., Jay Som’s Melina Duterte and Palehound’s Ellen Kempner) and Bartees Strange will provide support on the tour’s first and second halves or so, respectively, while Shamir will perform at Dacus’ Philadelphia show on Oct. 20. Tickets go on sale this Friday, April 16, at 10 a.m. local.
Watch the “Hot & Heavy” video below, and keep scrolling for Dacus’ 2016 Daytrotter session audio, the details of Home Video and her tour dates.
Home Video Tracklist:
01. Hot & Heavy
02. Christine
03. First Time
04. VBS
05. Cartwheel
06. Thumbs
07. Going Going Gone
08. Partner In Crime
09. Brando
10. Please Stay
11. Triple Dog Dare
Home Video Album Art:
Lucy Dacus Home Video Tour Dates:
September
10 – Richmond, VA @ The National (Julien Baker Headline/Lucy Support, + special guests)
11 – Richmond, VA @ The National (Lucy Headline/Julien Baker Support, + special guests)
13 – Saxapahaw, NC @ Haw River Ballroom %
14 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West %
15 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl %
17 – Dallas, TX @ Trees %
18 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall- Downstairs %
19 – Austin, TX @ Scoot Inn %
20 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger %
22 – Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole %
24 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Theatre at Ace Hotel %
25 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory OC %
27 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore %
30 – Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre $
October
01 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom $
02 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre $
05 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge $
08 – Iowa City, IA @ The Englert Theatre $
09 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue $
11 – Chicago, IL @ The Vic Theatre $
12 – Columbus , OH @ Newport Music Hall $
14 – Toronto, ON @ The Opera House $
15 – Montreal, QC @ L’Astral $
16 – Boston, MA @ House of Blues $
18 – Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground $
20 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer ^
22 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club $
25 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
(% = w/ Bachelor)
($ = w/ Bartees Strange)
(^ = w/ Shamir)
