By Katie Sanchez, Editor-in-Chief

Lucy Dacus’ new album “Forever is a Feeling” is like a 45-minute late-night yap sesh with a friend whom you love very dearly, but is also constantly on a teary emotional rollercoaster.

Released last Friday, Dacus’ fourth album clearly shows how much her life has changed since releasing her last album, “Home Video,” in 2021. Dacus is well-known as a solo artist, but she arguably rose to fame as a member of the indie girlie supergroup Boygenius alongside fellow sad girl musicians Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker. Since 2021, Boygenius has blown up in popularity, releasing their first full-length album “The Record” and selling out shows on a world tour. 

Dacus is more mainstream and famous now, which is evident in the theming and technical production on “Forever is a Feeling.” Dacus’ music has always been lyric-forward, but one of the high points of “Forever is a Feeling” is the way it uses enhanced instrumentation and technical editing to elevate Dacus’ lyrics, which, as always, are beautiful and haunting.

This amplified production underlines the heightened confidence that Dacus demonstrates on this album. “Forever is a Feeling” is less of the quiet, bedroom pop that Dacus’ previous albums were. She is taking up more space now, confidently saying what she feels.

What she feels, more than anything else, is that she is in love with girlfriend and Boygenius bandmate Julien Baker. The two have long been rumored to be dating, but Dacus confirmed their relationship shortly before the album’s release.

Not all of the songs on the album are directly about Baker, but their relationship kind of feels like the underlying theme of the album. Whether Dacus is singing about letting go of old relationships, longing for Baker while Baker was dating another woman, relishing in her love for Baker or commenting on love in general, this feels like The Julien Baker Album.

Dacus writes about love in such a beautiful, tender way, capturing the precious everyday moments of love in “Lost Time” and “Most Wanted Man.” Nonetheless, at points it kind of feels like when your friend starts dating someone new and can only talk about them, no matter what the conversation is about. It’s hard to knock Dacus for creating an album that could alternatively be called “I Love My Girlfriend,” but it’s hard not to miss the devastating, darker range of emotions present on “Home Video” and Dacus’ other past albums. Is it fair to demand a traditionally sad girl musician to keep producing sad girl music?

In a more general sense, “Forever is a Feeling” is an album that grapples with the impossibility of eternity and the relationship between destruction and creation. In a world where nothing lasts forever and love is fleeting, Dacus searches for enduring meaning wherever she can find it and tries to let go of the baggage of the past. “Modigliani,” in which Dacus mourns the way fame has caused her and Phoebe Bridgers (the Boygenius bandmate she’s not dating) to drift apart as friends.

Hozier makes an appearance on “Bullseye,” a high point on the album that similarly mourns the past while acknowledging the beauty of letting go. Hozier feels like a somewhat random feature, but he gives a great performance, so it’s hard to knock him too much.

Is “Forever is a Feeling” Dacus’ best album? Maybe, but not definitively. It is lush and gorgeous, but there is something about it that has not grabbed me in the way Dacus’ previous albums have. Maybe the lyrics just need to ferment in my soul more.

I only hope that Boygenius does not fragment like a queer Fleetwood Mac – although a Boygenius “Silver Springs” equivalent would probably go hard.