Lucy Dacus shows during tonight’s Badehaus gig why she’s one of America’s most exciting indie-rock prospects.
The performance from the 24-year-old Virginian and her three-man backing band is an unpolished but energising affair. Dacus starts and ends the night alone onstage to showcase two new and unreleased songs. The latter of the two – about her partner’s relationship with an absent father – provides a particularly powerful moment. Dacus clearly has songs spilling out of her.
The rest of the set largely features songs from the singer’s two full-length albums, with the recent singles also making a showing. Her sped-up cover of ‘La Vie En Rose‘ is a highlight of the night (“I didn’t write that one,” Dacus confesses). The follow-up ‘My Mother and I’ provides a touching contrast to some of the night’s wilder moments.
Dacus clearly has songs spilling out of her.
The singer’s stage presence is as endearing as her lyrical openness. “Did you know Germany is known for having the most attentive audiences?”, she asks the crowd, who chuckle quickly before attentively focusing on the next song. Two people talking through the intro are ‘shushed’. So am I when I point this out to my friend.
Even for the less aggressively loyal fans, there’s an irresistability about Dacus’s music tonight. ‘Night Shift’ (‘You’ve got a 9-5 so I’ll work the night shift / I’ll never see you again if I can help it‘) and ‘Addictions’ come to life onstage in a manner befitting the songwriter’s darker lyrical tendencies. And of course there’s time for her breakout surf-rock hit ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore’. The teasers heard tonight suggest there are many more of those to come.
