Cover image & all photos credit to Sam Stofko (@samshootsshows)
Words by Ria Rao
Lucy Dacus’s San Diego stop on her Forever is a Feeling tour was not just a concert, but a wedding (literally), an impromptu comedy set, and a collective celebration of love and joy in all its forms.
I could not contain my excitement to hear the latest installation in her discography, Forever is a Feeling, live. My anticipation was met by the lovely Slow Pulp, a four-piece rock band from Madison, Wisconsin. Their viral single “Falling Apart” off 2020’s Moveys plagued about 90% of my Spotify daylists this summer, and finally hearing the “moody girl poetry sunday evening rain” track live truly exceeded my expectations. Their setlist — spanning their debut single “Idaho” to indie rock hits “Cramps,” “Slugs,” “Broadview,” and “At Home” — was the perfect preface to Dacus’s performance.
The first track on Dacus’s setlist — “Hot and Heavy,” from 2021’s Home Video — was the perfect indie rock anthem to energize the crowd. During its bridge, a mysterious white sheet hanging behind Dacus fell down to reveal a truly beautiful and intentionally curated set. There were ancient Greek-esque vertical columns framing the stage, an embellished red backdrop, and gold frames of various sizes displaying art from greats like Michelangelo and Botticelli throughout the show. The Forever is a Feeling album cover art had been brought to life, and I felt like I had been transported to the Renaissance period with it.
After humbly introducing herself to a crowd full of diehard fans from her No Burden days, Lucy Dacus thanked a fan for the pink corsage she wore pinned to her lapel. It was a reference to the final track on boygenius’s the record, “We’re in Love,” and a fitting transition into her next song, “Modigliani”: a tender dedication to her friendship with Phoebe Bridgers that features the boygenius member’s background vocals on the track. The gold-framed screens behind her displayed Italian painter Modigliani’s colorful works, known for featuring elongated faces. (“Why the long face?”) I found that this clever lyricism and dry wit went beyond her songs. At one point, she joked that “It’s fun to be booed,” elicited a chorus of “boo”s from the crowd, and replied, “This feels like the first day of first grade.” It was moments like these throughout the night that made an 4,600-seat SDSU amphitheater feel like a wine-drunk night in with your closest friends.
Dacus played the “unrequited love” ballad “Limerence,” in a stripped-down violin arrangement. After a throwback to her 2021 album with “Home Video” and “Triple Dog Dare” came my favorite moment of the entire night. During “Best Guess,” Dacus invited four couples donned in their finest white to the stage to wed them in the makeshift “Forever is a Feeling Wedding Chapel.” It was a lovely moment unlike anything I’d ever experienced at a concert. From pledging $1 from every ticket to queer and trans youth through The Ally Coalition to marrying couples in a time where nothing is truly promised, Lucy Dacus’s advocacy is constant and unapologetic. The crowd recovered and wiped away happy tears as Dacus sang the crowd favorite “Big Deal” against a backdrop of Claude Monet’s water lilies.
Dacus then lay down on an ornate blue couch and took a moment to reminisce with the crowd on her “really weird” last show in San Diego (which I very unhappily missed for a high school marching band competition). She played the next song “Bus Back to Richmond,” a recent release and bittersweet ode to her hometown, before introducing E.R. Fightmaster to the stage. The Grey’s Anatomy actor and solo artist jokingly took the place of “tall Irishman” Hozier for “Bullseye.”
Dacus concluded the set with “True Blue” off the record. Lucy Dacus is one of few artists who acknowledged the cat-and-mouse game that a crowd and artist plays during encore, and certainly did not disappoint. She played “Night Shift,” a six-and-a-half minute breakup ballad that, if you couldn’t tell from the gut-wrenching screams and emotional sobs from the audience, was a fan favorite. After the first verse, she gingerly told the crowd to come closer and a sea of phone flashlights immediately rushed to the pit for one last collective hurrah to close off the night.
Forever is a Feeling is a sweet and intimate collection of sentimental love stories, vulnerable confessions, and everything in between. It cleverly reprises Dacus’s 2018 album Historian’s themes of religion and guilt, and 2021 record Home Video’s fond nostalgia, creating the perfect amalgamation of her previous projects. Complete with Renaissance motifs, a reappearance of the infamous couch from her Home Video tour in 2022, and a wedding as a nod to a current contentious sociopolitical climate, an ordinary Tuesday night in my hometown felt transformed into something more. In one moonlit night at a San Diego amphitheater, Lucy Dacus masterfully charted her third studio album — Forever is a Feeling — amongst love and lust, religion and reason, and art and poetry.
Listen to Forever is a Feeling below!
