Forever Is A Feeling - Lucy Dacus (Guest Review)

 

Review by k tessa

Melancholy sapphic troubadour Lucy Dacus could probably make a good song out of the ways I feel about her. I admire her immensely, both for her consistency as an artist and her courage as a soft, butch-y celebrity in our contemporary culture. I think she's an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. But (and it breaks my heart to say this), much as I've tried to make it work, I don't know that I've ever loved her. Such emotions would fit right in on her fourth solo album, Forever Is A Feeling.

Typically, my apathy would be unremarkable - but Dacus clearly expects her listeners to feel, very deeply, about this record. Its opening track, "Calliope Prelude", is a brief crescendo of soaring violins. It's named after the greatest of the Muses from Greek myth, the one who inspired The Iliad and other epic works. The cover presents Dacus herself inside an ornate gold frame, draped in golden silk like a deific Renaissance subject, the album's title literally tattooed across her chest in classical calligraphy. The presentation leaves no room for misinterpretation: Dacus wants you to consider that this album is something that can last, something worthy of being called "great art".

And why wouldn't she? It's her first release since taking over the world with (and subsequently stepping away from) boygenius, her indie rock supergroup with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. Together, the trio won endless awards (including multiple Grammys) for their first LP, the record, and intentionally or not played a vital role in expanding the sapphic cultural moment we currently find ourselves in. Though disbanded for now, boygenius' overwhelming success (and FIAF's status as the first full-length release by any of its members since) means that more people than ever will hear Dacus' songs.

These are pretty high stakes, and I respect Dacus' confidence in meeting them. Ultimately, though, this album is a rather straightforward, often safe collection of singer-songwriter rock songs about love, its blossoming out of friendship, and its regretful absence. Sonically, there's little invention here, with Dacus taking an "if it ain't broke" tack to her powerful, approachable songwriting. She can still craft monster riffs, like the Beatles-esque jangle of "Most Wanted Man" and the slinky line that drives standout single "Best Guess", but most of the tracks capitulate to the defaults of current analog-pop production: violin stabs, plaintive piano notes, and delicately strummed acoustic guitars. If anything, it's even more restrained than her explorations on 2021's Home Video, and a far cry from the dynamism that (naturally) resulted from her collaborations with Baker and Bridgers.

All that said, there's still a lot to like here, especially lyrically. This is where the content finally matches the presentation, the tracks ruminating beautifully on importance - with an implicit understanding that it doesn't come from whether something lasts. Forever isn't a timeframe, after all - it's a feeling. It can be the bittersweet joy of letting an old flame go get married with no regrets, as on "Big Deal", or the hard acceptance that "For Keeps"' passionate fling isn't actually going anywhere, or the honest-to-goodness, head-over-heels love that Dacus finally lets herself publicly express for Julien Baker across nearly the entire back half of the record. It's funny - this last group contains the album's best songs, but they're often the least confident lyrically, like Dacus feels uncomfortable wearing her happiness. Side A bars like "Why do I feel alive when I'm behaving my worst?" and "I don't believe in anything anymore / Except you and me supremacy" will caption the IG photodumps of toxic, yearning lesbians for years to come, but powerful closer "Lost Time"'s simple "But I love you, and every day / That I knew and didn't say is lost time" likely won't get the same treatment. Even Dacus, who built her empire on sad girl shit, described the sentiment as "really embarrassing to say. It's not poetic... there's no really getting around it. It's such a powerful, overweighted statement."

And here is where I have to move beyond the record and into cultural critique, because even though this is a gentle, tender, earnest, and sometimes even beautiful album, I can't help but see the scaffolding around it. Like any major release in 2025, Forever Is A Feeling is more than a collection of songs - it's a value proposition. If honest expressions of true, joyous love, devoid of the morose poetry that made Dacus a star, have been allowed to slip through, it's because other factors are keeping them from threatening the calculus of sapphic profitability.

Though rumored for years, Dacus and Baker's relationship finally got an official announcement (in The New Yorker, no less) as part of this album's marketing blitz, a week before release. Given the record's content, you can read the timing as cynical or as reclamation. It certainly helps inform Dacus' persistent capitulation across the songs to forces beyond her control, mostly time. Even when it comes to Baker, she makes no assumptions and takes nothing for granted - "If it's not God, it's fate, if it's not fate, it's chance / If it's my chance, I'm gonna take it". It reads almost like Dacus understanding that, after a career built on heartbreak, if she finally gets to be happy, it's because it's finally good for her brand. Everybody loves a good celebrity couple rumor come true.

The thing about sapphicism (especially the profitable kind) is its emotional availability. It holds space for others, even those who wrong you. boygenius' substantial success came alongside eager parasocial musings about "the boys" and their escapades; whether such fan interactions influenced the group's split is yet another rumor. Yet unlike many current artists' recent releases, Dacus never bemoans her celebrity, takes shots at listeners, or expresses sorrow over her group's hiatus. In fact, of the many emotions on this record, anger and bitterness are notably absent - with one exception.

Because Dacus is Dacus, and because I'm me, I have to end this review talking about Forever Is A Feeling's relationship to men and masculinity. Her straightest shot, on “Come Out”, is aimed at the “old men collecting dust in the boardroom”, “guessing what the kids are getting into” and making her miss a phone call from her love, all while the cardboard cowboy cutout they keep in the corner points his gun at her. While high off bong hits on "Limerence", paranoia frames a he/him friend's skill at Grand Theft Auto as "cause for concern". There's also Phoebe Bridgers' new boyfriend, who, on "Modigliani", Dacus accuses Bridgers of "trying...on for size", copying his mannerisms "even if it doesn't fit". It's the closest she ever gets to being mean.

In 2025, a woman in music criticizing men would be so commonplace as to pass without comment, if it weren't for one key detail: aside from giving a pass to archetypal he/him lesbian Hozier, here crooning half a duet about a hard breakup (but no hard feelings), the only people Dacus allows to positively wear the label of "man" are herself and Baker. She calls herself "a gambling man" for betting on her new relationship and tells an anecdote about a memorial bench plaque imprinting the words “Loving father, friend, and son”, along with the name “David”, backwards into her shoulder, before asking Bridgers, “Why does it feel significant? Why do I have to tell you about it?” To Baker she gives the title of "the most wanted man in West Tennessee", then proclaims that if she gives Dacus the "time to write the book on" her, they "can burn it when it's done / Soot and cinder in the sun / Nothing left for anyone to read / And weep".

I don't really know what to make of all this. Are these classic butch reclamations of manhood, or careful rebellions against the sapphic business plan? Does Dacus truly feel no ire for her freakshow followers writing fanfiction about her and her friends? Does she know that criticizing them would give the game away? Or was this record already written by the time boygenius popped off? 

Am I reading too much into it? Should I just imagine "the boys" happy?

For more guest reviews, check out Megan's take on the new Nav album OMW2 REXDALE