Lucy Dacus has been getting deep in touch with her emotions in anticipation of her fourth studio album, Forever Is a Feeling, out March 28. Early singles from the record, like “Limerence” and “Ankles,” delve into euphoric, complicated emotions. But on the latest installation of Rolling Stone Recommends, the musician taps into the more feral feelings that come with playing competitive card games with friends, the idea of being monstrously hungry on Survivor, and recovering from watching David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.
“I stopped watching TV after I finished Twin Peaks for like, 10 years,” Dacus said. “I was like, I can’t let a TV show reach my heart like that again. I need to close off.” It’s why she never got around to watching Twin Peaks: The Return. “I felt scared,” she admits. Her other TV recommendations are lighter — kind of.
“I always [recommend] Survivor, especially if people want a long journey,” she said, but if she had to participate herself the journey might be over before it begins. “Who I am when I have not eaten is not someone I want the world to see. Ultimately, I would probably like try to figure out who I think deserved it the most and helped them.”
Hacks and The Bear haven’t steered her wrong, yet. “I love The Bear. Ayo [Edebiri] forever. Cousin… There’s something sad and deep in that guy’s eyes,” she added. “I think a lot of funny actors have the opportunity to have so much depth. When you expect funniness from them, and then they’re serious, I love that bait and switch.”
A good bait-and-switch is key for playing poker. The musician recently hosted a game in the music video for her recent single “Best Guess” with appearances from Cara Delevingne, Towa Bird, Naomi McPherson, and more appear. “Cara Delevingne plays poker all the time,” Dacus said. “I also thought of her because she’s one of the first lesbians I ever really knew about in media. I remember friends cutting out her face and putting it on their inspo-walls and then the bait and switch of like, ‘Oh my God. She’s gay.’”
But while card likes like poker, or the popular Argentinian game Truco, can raise the stakes, Dacus also recommends wandering through museums. “Shoutout to all the free museums. Growing up in Richmond and being so close to D.C., I didn’t know museums cost money. Growing up, I was like, ‘museums are free.’ And that is how it should be,” she said. “The [Virginia Museum of Fine Arts] in Richmond, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany is great; I’m a Musée d’Orsay person in Paris. There’s one in Philly, The Barnes Foundation. I wrote one of the songs while I was there. I might have been there with Maggie Rogers, actually. But I’ve been there lots of times, I took Julien there on her birthday on the Boygenius tour.”
Dacus performed at a few museums and churches in the lead up to Forever Is a Feeling. The album cover itself, an oil painting by the artist Will St. John, channels the kind of art that might be hanging on the walls. “You always think like, ‘Oh, my art will outlive me,’” Dacus said. “It won’t outlive everything. Even art is not forever.” Of having the album title tattooed across her chest in the image, she explained: “I wanted this classic portrayal of me as kind of like one of the fates, when you see pre-Raphaelite depictions of truth or honor, supple women and robes. A tattoo being the title, tattoos also feel like they’re forever, but we have a friend that says they’re like the most temporary form of art, because they pass when the body does.”
“All the time, things are changing. Things are growing and things are decaying. And that’s true of relationships,” she continued. “If you’re afraid to change something it’s going to change anyways, there’s no keeping it the way that it is.”
