Lucy Dacus on the “best band living right now”
Since the mid-2010s, a new generation of female-fronted folk-influenced artists has revolutionised indie. Pairing vulnerable lyrics with soft but stirring instrumentals, the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker have somehow revived indie folk and made it cool again. At the centre of this movement is singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus.
Following the release of her debut EP on Bandcamp over a decade ago, Dacus made a name for herself as a soloist with modern indie folk classics like Historian, which featured her beautifully intimate biggest hit ‘Night Shift’. Dacus became an integral part of this emerging scene, befriending Bridgers and Baker to form the supergroup Boygenius in 2018. It was a powerful combination, and the three have been lauded for their work together on The Record, becoming an indie internet staple.
But Dacus’ indie folk networking extends beyond Bridgers and Baker. The singer-songwriter has also managed to befriend the band she believes to be the “best living right now”, fellow indie folk rockers Big Thief.
The singer-songwriter first stumbled upon the magic of their music in the early 2010s, as she once recalled while talking to The Line of Best Fit. Mat Davidson, also known as Twain, was practising in Dacus’ friend’s garage. He was accompanied by two voices she didn’t recognise at the time – Big Thief vocalist Adrianne Lenker and guitarist Buck Meek. Dacus recalls this being her “first exposure to them pre-Big Thief. I didn’t meet them, but that night held a mystic place in my mind.”
Her first real exposure to Big Thief came when they opened for her at the Savannah Stopover Festival. She reminisces, “I went up to Adrianne and was like, ‘Hey, you probably don’t know this guy Matt; he has a band called Twain. They’re kind of small, but you’re the only other band that’s ever made me feel how Twain has made me feel,’ and she said, ‘Oh, Matt is one of my best friends.’ So I put it together that that was them singing with him.”
Dacus went on to explain the comforting power of their music, suggesting, “Listening to them feels like the default; it feels so familiar and right. I think Adrianne’s maybe right that the songs exist independently from who they are as people; I think they’ve tapped into channelling their music.”
Despite calling herself a “very dedicated Big Thief fan” and noting how lucky she feels to call them friends, she suggested that this comes with its own pressures: “‘Mythological Beauty’ is the only song, I guess along with Twain, where I’ve felt like a part of it, where I’ve realised that I’m doing this at the same time. These are my contemporaries and friends, and that’s an intense realisation and responsibility.”
Like many of her own fans, Dacus is a self-proclaimed Big Thief devotee. While she might feel the pressure to live up to the “best band living right now”, her music also contains that mystic quality – it’s almost a prerequisite of the modern indie folk revival. Dacus’ songwriting has provided audiences with the exact same comforting familiarity Big Thief have provided her.
