Following an album and tour with
Boygenius -- her trio with fellow twentysomething singer/songwriters
Julien Baker and
Phoebe Bridgers --
Lucy Dacus headed to Nashville with her backing band in August 2019 to record her third solo LP. More personal than its predecessors,
Home Video draws on memories of coming of age in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Strikingly vulnerable, tender, and sometimes regretful, it consists entirely of first-person narratives about subjects like deadbeat dads, awkward sexual encounters, and identity self-denial. It opens with "Hot & Heavy," an affectionate and embarrassed midtempo entry featuring ringing guitars and multi-tracked vocals as part of a full-band introduction. The track list is split between smooth indie rockers and sparer ballads, with "First Time" offering the one true fuzzy rocker of the set. Its controlled adrenaline rush includes the opening lines "Broke into the screened-in porch/Now I'm crawling through the dog door/I may let you see me on my knees/But you'll never see me on all fours." Another song about a personal connection, "Brando," confronts a pretentious film buff who once referred to her as "cerebral" ("Would it have killed you to call me pretty instead?").
Baker and
Bridgers join her on a pair of tracks here, including "Going Going Gone," a campfire-style acoustic ditty whose other unidentifiable backing vocalists include
Mitski and
Liza Anne. The centerpiece of
Home Video, however, is the riveting "Thumbs," a hushed keyboard ballad about
Dacus accompanying a 19-year-old friend to meet with a father she hadn't seen since the fifth grade. Furious about how it all plays out,
Dacus eventually ushers her friend home: "You feel him watchin'/So we walk a mile in the wrong direction." The album closes on the over-seven-minute "Triple Dog Dare." A compassionate lament set to humming keyboards and soft strums, it regrets repressing (mutual) attraction to a friend with an interfering mother. With
Dacus' warm vocals and melodies leading the way throughout,
Home Video is an engrossing set steeped in life lessons and nostalgia. ~ Marcy Donelson