Lucy Dacus

Home Video

It takes profound empathy to write an entire album about your own past and have it turn out to be about your love for others instead.

Home Video is her greatest work yet — a cohesive and poignant collection of tales from her teenage years in Richmond, Virginia.

In each tale she finds both loss and hope, a musical representation of the intricate jigsaw of life.

What Dacus has done with Home Video is nothing short of sensational – it’s an album capable of effortlessly tugging at the heart strings and is almost certainly a shoo-in for some end of year lists.

With a quotable line on almost every song, Home Video cements Dacus’ reputation as one of her generation’s major talents.

With Home Video ... Dacus finds the pages of her diary she just can't shake, turning them into songs that are destined to stay with you, too.

It's a clever trick: blending specific details straight from memoir with the eloquence of hindsight and, where needed, a pinch of wilful fiction, finding points of universal connection amid all the personal nostalgia.

On her third album, the American songwriter plunders her past for gutsy, clear-cut tales of teenage love and friendship.

Home Video is intimate, occasionally discomfiting, and, most of all, brave – the sound of an artist choosing to be at her most vulnerable, in front of a bigger following than she’s ever had before.

Regardless of her context or yours, Dacus weaves a broad scale epic full of lusty almost adventures, broken hearts, dashed dreams, and damsels in distress that couldn’t quite be saved.

Home Video ... is just what you’d expect from such a talent. Here, her wise brand of rock music blooms into something even more palpable, relatable and beautifully messy.

It’s a powerful ending to a powerful album, confirming Home Video as another exquisite offering from Lucy Dacus.

For the most part, Dacus proves that looking back at your past might make you cringe, but there is beauty and value in those faltering, gawky days.

As each track unfolds, it feels as though you are watching Lucy through the lens as she returns to her coming-of-age years.