Photo credit: Jenna Houchin
Following her recent solo album, singer Lucy Dacus has treated fans to a dual release of two new singles today. The two releases, “Bus Back to Richmond” and “More Than Friends,” both released today with lyric videos and provide an interesting parallel on two stories of love. The videos can be found on Dacus’ YouTube channel.
The first of the two, Bus Back to Richmond is a short and somber song. It features Dacus singing over little more than an acoustic guitar, detailing an experience during New Year’s celebrations. While never explicitly stated to be a partner, Dacus speaks to someone who is almost certainly meant to be a lover of some kind. The melancholic tone of the song suits the lyrics, speaking about all sorts of missed opportunities and unmade connections, showing a relationship clearly struggling. The song ends on the poignant lines, ” You said, ‘Please give me a chance,’ you didn’t know that I already had,” showing that the relationship the song focuses on clearly was not meant to be.
“More Than Friends,” meanwhile is a bit more upbeat, both in sound and in it’s story of love. While still a mellow track, it’s got a more feel good atmosphere. As the title suggests, it features Dacus speaking about a person particularly close to her, going over their dynamic and time spent together. The pair seems perfectly imperfect – as Dacus puts it, “we don’t make sense from the outside” – and the closeness of their relationship is revealed to have come accidentally. The song ends pondering how each of the two should go about after the other’s passing, before asking if the two should be “more than friends.” The entire song has a subtly romantic nature made clear with this final line. With the partner’s gender being unclear, the mentions of their relationship managing to “open something up” and the general way the clearly romantic relationship is treated in a more subtle manner, it’s not unlikely the song is also meant to have an LGBT angle to it, given that Dacus herself has occasionally spoken about being queer herself.
The dual release provides a nice treat for fans, as well as an interesting contrast between two songs, both about relationships going in very different ways. Fans of Dacus are sure to be excited by this treat, so short after the artist’s debut into solo work. The singles are also set to receive limited edition vinyl releases, with only 2,000 to be printed.
