Forever Is A Feeling

USインディー・シーンを牽引するトリオ・バンド、ボーイジーニアスのメンバー、ルーシー・ダッカスの4作目アルバム!
前作『ホーム・ビデオ』が幼少期と思春期の世界を探求していたのに対し、今作では大人の世界を、艶やかなサウンドで、自身のセクシュアリティとロマンスを描き、制作にはバンドメンバーであるフィービー・ブリジャーズ、ジュリアン・ベイカーも携わっている。

On 2021s very personal Home Video, Lucy Dacus looked back upon her coming-of-age experiences, with results that were vulnerable, touching, and occasionally tinged with regret. In the four years before releasing her next solo album, Boygenius -- her band with fellow late-millennial singer/songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker -- blew up, topping the album chart in the U.K., hitting the U.S. Top Five, and selling out a show at Madison Square Garden. With a larger fan base for her solo music lying in wait, she makes her major-label debut on Geffen Records with Forever Is a Feeling. Unlike Home Video, it finds Dacus all grown up, examining "its complicated" relationships through an adult lens on songs that are no less personal, vulnerable, or touching. Produced by Dacus and Blake Mills, its more expansive sound includes appearances by Mills on several instruments, her Boygenius bandmates (backing vocals), Madison Cunningham (guitars), Phoenix Rousiamanis (violin, keyboards), Bartees Strange, and Jay Soms Melina Duterte, among others. None other than Hozier has the albums one featured spot, on the duet "Bullseye," a tender, acoustic guitar- and pedal steel-based recollection of a love with no regrets, even though the relationship ended. The album as a whole is tender and affectionate, seeming to accept and appreciate even the awkward and unrequited as part of her embrace of complexity and queerness. The 13 tracks here do take different forms, though, including an opening, dissonant "Calliope Prelude"; the suspenseful piano and strings on the cabaret-like "Limerence" ("I want what we have, our beautiful life/But the stillness, the stillness, might eat me alive"); the stomping, oversaturated textures of "Talk" ("Why cant we talk anymore?"); and the midtempo rock of "Most Wanted Man," whose heavier guitar tones are almost Beatlesque. While remaining relatively mellow in tone, the albums title track is an obvious centerpiece featuring Bridgers and Baker, Mills bass, Cunninghams 12-string guitar, Duertes drum programming and synths, Stranges additional drums, and several other components pieced together by five engineers and including harp and gamelan players. It temporarily changes keys and passes through several emotional contradictions on the way to deciding shes in the relationship for the long haul. Forever Is a Feeling closes, significantly, with "Lost Time," a song whose sparse-bulky-sparse structure emphasizes her regret at not saying those three little words sooner. In the end, she manages to subtly dramatize her music without betraying the quiet honesty shes already known and beloved for. ~ Marcy Donelson

自身がメンバーに名を連ねるボーイジーニアス『The Record』(2023年)の大成功を経てリリースされた待望のソロ4作目。前作が幼少期の繊細さをポップに表現した作品だったのに対し、今作は柔らかく温かい雰囲気を持つフォーキーな作風で、随所に大人の色気も感じさせる。歌い方やアナログ感たっぷりのアコースティック・サウンドも含め、どことなくジョニ・ミッチェルの『Court And Spark』(74年作)を想起させる傑作と言っていい。バンドメイトであるフィービー・ブリジャーズとジュリアン・ベイカー、アイルランドのホージアら豪華なゲスト陣それぞれの名演も聴きどころです。
bounce (C)赤瀧洋二