“Say cheese! I think nobody blinked,” Lucy Dacus remarked as she squeezed the shutter of her camera, pointing at the hundreds of fans packed into the House of Blues Boston.
Dacus, an acclaimed singer-songwriter known for her folk-tinged indie jams, as well as her work in the supergroup boygenius (alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker), stopped at House of Blues on Oct. 16 as part of her "Home Video" tour. The tour followed the release of her June 2021 album of the same name. The highly acclaimed album is aptly named, as most of the songs are meditations on childhood and early adult memories.
Concertgoers lined up outside of the House of Blues before the sold-out show, with the line taking up nearly the entire street. After the Doc Marten-bedecked crowd filtered into the venue, the show began with an opening set by Bartees Strange.The D.C.-based artist, who in the last year has been booked to open for Dacus, Courtney Barnett and Phoebe Bridgers, as well as making an appearance on the "Late Night with Seth Meyers" (2014–), began his set with “Going Going” (2020), a solemn tune that began with high energy and mellowed out over the course of the song. Strange's vocals were the highlight of the number, with a powerfully belted chorus that filled the venue with rich sound. Strange continued his set with “Flagey God” (2020), a house-esque song featuring 8-bit sounding synth and smooth vocals.
“Do we have any National fans?” Strange asked, before launching into covers of the indie rock band’s songs. Strange ended his set with an original number. The set was electrifying, and the most impressive aspect of Strange is his ability to merge multiple sounds into cohesive and compelling songs, integrating sounds such as rap and rock, as well his impressive wheelhouse; his guitar, rapping and vocal abilities are all impressive on their own, and when merged together, create a sonic powerhouse.
Before Dacus' set, childhood home videos of Dacus were projected onto the stage, ranging from her as a newborn to her as a young adult playing guitar onstage. As the band finally walked out (to raucous applause), the screen cut to static, and Dacus joined the band onstage. She began her set with the final track off "Home Video," “Triple Dog Dare” (2021), a particularly vulnerable and emotional (which is saying something, as all of Dacus’ songs powerfully tug at the heartstrings) song about repressed, queer childhood love. Dacus’ soft but unwavering vocals as she sang, “Your mama read my palm/ She wouldn’t tell me what it was she saw/ But after that, you weren’t allowed to spend the night,” were particularly heart wrenching, amplified all the more by the dozens of fans’ voices singing alongside her.
The set continued with “First Time,” a more upbeat song, also off “Home Video.” Dacus followed with “Addictions,” a track about being addicted to a relationship with another person, off her 2018 album “Historian.” On the screen behind Dacus, an animated version of the "Historian" album cover flickered as she played.
“Hot & Heavy,” one of the first singles off of “Home Video,” followed. Dacus swapped out her electric guitar for an acoustic one, which mingled with the twinkling synth. During the song, Dacus approached each section of the crowd, spurring applause from concertgoers. Dacus ditched her guitar for “Christine,” another song off the new record, which focuses on a friend of Dacus and her partner, who Dacus deems unworthy of her friend’s love. Tenderness and humor mingle in the final verse of the song, where Dacus declares, “But if you’d get married, I’d object/ Throw my shoe at the altar and lose your respect,” a lyric that Dacus indicated on Twitter was inspired by the famous “Bush shoeing incident”, where Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoe at then-president George W. Bush (it's also worth noting that her tweet caught the attention of al-Zaidi himself, tweeting back “Thank you dear lucy”).
After “Christine,” Dacus introduced herself and noted that the "Home Video" tour marked her biggest headlining tour in her career. She then plunged into “VBS,” a melancholic and, at times, lighthearted look back toward Dacus’s experience at Vacation Bible School. She continued with “Cartwheel,” which featured a dreamy guitar solo by the lead guitarist.
Dacus continued the set with “La Vie En Rose” (1947), a cover off of her “2019” EP, and followed it with “Yours & Mine” (2018). During the bridge, Dacus’ band members joined in for an ethereal five-part harmony, with their voices beautifully mixing as they sang “me and mine” over and over.
Dacus returned to new tracks off of “Home Video” with “Please Stay,” “Partner in Crime” and “Brando.”“Thumbs,” a song that Dacus performed live for years but only released this year, followed. After the song, Dacus joked about a graphic lyric where she describes gouging out someone’s eyes, saying, “I tried to not look anybody in the eye.”
Strange briefly returned to the stage to join the band for “Going Going Gone,” and Dacus closed the show with two of her older songs: “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” (2016) and “Night Shift” (2018). After briefly leaving the stage, Dacus and her band returned to the stage for a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” (1984). Dacus continued her tradition of playing unreleased songs, telling the audience to not record the final song, joking, “If you see someone recording, just bully them.”
