Forever Is A Feeling With Lucy Dacus at the Mass MoCA

Lucy Dacus returned to Massachusetts on a beautiful New England summer evening in North Adams, Massachusetts on July 23 to perform at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum, housed in a converted factory building complex, hosts concerts in their outdoor courtyard as part of their mission to promote and support the performing arts. The intimate venue provided the perfect atmosphere for Lucy’s confessional songwriting, and an art museum as the setting perfectly matched the aesthetic of her most recent album, Forever Is A Feeling.

Beginning the night, Smidley (the solo project of St. Louis-based singer Conor Murphy) brought a fun mix of indie and emo music to open the set, thanking Lucy’s team for how welcoming they’d been and even bringing Lucy out for a surprise early appearance to sing a duet with him.

As dusk fell on the packed courtyard, Lucy Dacus and her band walked onstage to a cheering throng of fans. She opened the show with crowd-favorite ‘Hot and Heavy,’ which immediately had everyone in the audience singing and dancing. Lucy took the time to look out on both halves of the crowd, crossing the stage and drawing cheers from each side.

What followed was a setlist that brought the perfect mix of hopeful and melancholy. Songs like ‘Ankles’ and ‘Talk’ from Forever Is A Feeling had the whole crowd yelling and dancing, while heartfelt ballads ‘Big Deal’ and ‘Thumbs’ had multiple concert-goers wiping tears and clinging to the person beside them. She even brought Conor Murphy of Smidley back out to sing ‘Bullseye’ alongside her.

During a pause in set, Lucy took time to connect with audience with a mini Q&A session and even sang her band’s version of “happy birthday” to a very lucky fan. 

The minimal set design, featuring three hanging picture frames that called to mind her album cover, helped her breathtaking vocal performance stand out even more. 

As the end of the show approached, Lucy stunned the crowd into silence with a gorgeous performance of Triple Dog Dare from Home Video before bringing the vibes back up with the title track of her latest album. 

She returned after wild cheers for a two-song encore, performing the boygenius song True Blue (from the band she shares with collaborators Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker). To conclude the unforgettable evening at the Mass MoCA, she encouraged the crowd to scream as loud as they wanted as she closed out her set with ‘Night Shift’ from her first album Historian.

Lucy Dacus will close out her Forever Is a Feeling tour with two more festival appearances in California and Washington before playing her final show of the tour at the Hollywood Bowl. Learn more and get tickets here.