Growing up is never easy, even less so in the shadow of religion, but if this sounds like quite a stark high concept for Lucy Dacus’ third album, it still sums it up well enough. Raised in a Christian environment in Virginia by parents who cared enough to be stood out on the porch when she got home late, the roots of Home Video were in post-touring blues and a replanting of herself halfway across America from her familial home. Reaching backwards as so many of us do and filtering, the stories it inspires are told with the skill of a writer coming to terms with both progress and pain.
After a successful digression as a member of Boygenius with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, gaining perspective has allowed the singer to approach that period which spans the final strands of innocence and the onset of early womanhood, a first boyfriend gently damned with ‘Poetry was so bad/I took a lot to not laugh’ on VBS whilst the mansplaining hipster of Brando reachs out and touches nothing ‘You called me cerebral/I didn’t know what it meant/Would it have killed you to call me pretty instead’.
Whilst rites of passage tales can be fascinating they also usually have a ceiling, but across a multitude of backdrops that span folk, dream laden country and gentle and not-so-gentle rock this a scrapbook with bold ambitions. A maze of contrasts, it finishes with the grandly ebbing Triple Dog Dare, but the sheer beauty of Cartwheel is a breath waiting to be taken away. Growing up is never easy, but Home Video leaves a trail in the maze it’s joy to follow.
Read the full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 
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