Lucy Dacus - No Burden

Lucy Dacus
No Burden
2016
Spotify

The female indie rocker has had quite the couple of years. More and more females are taking charge of a heavily male dominated genre and putting their stamp on it. Richmond based singer songwritter Lucy Dacus however is doing it at the very top level. Her music has all the great things we expect from American Indie Rock; Somewhat distorted guitars, a bend towards Country or Americana and a song writing prowess that really sets her apart. Without a lot of Indie music the singer can sound a bit disinterested, it's a style choice and often one that can leave the audience feeling alienated. However Dacus is different, Her voice screams for connection, it invites you in to experience her world however naked it may leave her. Her observations can often be blunt but that is half of what makes her so endearing, you want this straight talk coming from a voice that is unwavering. The production on the record can often vary from muddled to a little less muddled but where in the hand of another artist this would be painful to listen to Lucy Dacus uses it to her advantage and let's her voice which is not all that high really soar. When Lucy is slowed down and paired only with an acoustic guitar she comes up with one of the most pleasing songs in "Trust".

Simple seems to be king on No Burden allowing the lyrics to shine for themselves rather than mixing them up in a great deal of instrumentation. The album also has a very warm feeling that it never looses song to song. Dacus wraps you up in a blanket by a fire and just lets the music come to you slowly yet surely. "Dream State..." and "...Familiar Place" both have the same chorus "Without you I am surely the last of Kind/Without You I am surely the last of Our kind." with the former being about a flood and the later has the singer crawling through a dead garden. It seems to show the flowing nature of dreams and how one thing can be another moment to moment while still building to a whole different interpretation. These songs seem to complete each other despite being apart, perhaps an illusion to the way we live our lives. In an attempt to live up to the title No Burden Dacus seems to propose a world of purely existing alone separate from the rest of the world. That however breaks down as the album goes on showing that we all exist together and thus can never truly be "No Burden", but that seems to be ok.

8.0 out of 10