With another solo album on the way and a strong lead single to pair, Lucy Dacus continues this push toward Forever is a Feeling with Limerence. Infatuation is not a surprise idea for a Dacus-penned song, it forms much of her work, including that of boygenius, but it is the reliance on strong writing, the lived-in experience which filtered through her previous single, Ankles, that makes it unique. Limerence is a strong piece of work, another intimate encounter with the highs and lows of life. Those initial piano notes are meant to present the ethereal, the sombre lightness, but the crack of a higher key feels like a horror waiting to unfold. In some way, Limerence is a horror, it is filled with the same thriller intent as a chilling encounter. Obsession is not romantic, it is ruinous, as Limerence is keen to point out.
Dacus writes with the afterglow of a faded encounter at heart. The attempts we make to move on. We have all been there – and it is the everyday situation, the uniqueness we feel in terrible circumstances, where your stomach is trying to break up and out of your throat, that makes Limerence such a relatable piece. Truth-telling, popcorn-shovelling attempts at guiding yourself back to safer shores after you’ve been punctured and set adrift. The affection has dried up, the piano notes begin to shrivel and turn colder, putting the focus on Dacus’ voice. Her blur of effective songwriting and fantastic vocal work is crucial to Limerence’s success. There is agreeable, then there is believable. It is the latter which opens us up. What we may find relatable is what another may find coy or sickly. Irrespective of which side you fall to, there is no doubting the earnestness and closeness which comes through Limerence. It truly is quite an achievement from Dacus.
Introspective works often depend on the emotional hang-ups provided by a blistering, brightly burning romantic encounter. It is not the act of persuading us that it happened which Dacus must contend with, but the idea it hurt this much. Limerence does well in providing a voice to those who struggle to cough up the words on their own, to summarise and understand their feelings, be it loss or failure. Heartfelt is the word which springs to mind so often when listening to Limerence and the songs released in the lead-up to Forever is a Feeling. The everyday becomes fonder when it stops being the norm. A few logical flaws come through, how someone gets good enough at Grand Theft Auto they are put to song, for instance, is a read on the great divide between the arts. But that is just nitpicking.
Artists have a responsibility to be open with their listeners. If not open, then they must paint a picture of fiction worth viewing. Dacus has opted for the former, an open book who writes up these experiences her listeners have, too, no doubt gone through. But it is in defining her similar moments to that of her listeners that the difference is made. Dacus has a clear eye for the points in time which overlap with another experience. Through that camaraderie, we find comfort. Is that not why listeners so often return to songs of bust relationships or broken love? It makes sense to do so, as though it makes us feel better in our slog of romance. Limerence is an exceptional effort from an album which, with the benefit of not yet hearing it fully, has potential to be Dacus’ defining moment.
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