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‘I would never be able to sing a song that a robot wrote’: Lucy Dacus on her new album’s themes of artistry and intimacy

As the indie singer-songwriter and Boygenius star releases her latest, highly personal solo record, she talks of her weariness of AI and digital art, the pressures of being in a public relationship, and her anger and fears in Trump’s US

Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/APIn 2018, she joined forces with Californian Phoebe Bridgers and Tennessee-born Julien Baker, two songwriters who share her enthusiasm for 90s alternative music, ethereal harmonies and dry internet humour, to form supergroup Boygenius. In the run-up to its release, Dacus has deliberately scaled things down, playing a selection of tiny gigs in boutique, atmospheric venues: the neo-gothic Vondelkerk in Amsterdam; a candle-lit show at the Église Saint-Eustache in Paris, where she dedicated a song to her girlfriend (“I wonder if that has never been done in this building,” she mused, eliciting cheers). The cover is a Renaissance-style oil painting of Dacus by artist Will St John; in the video for lead single Ankles, she is a portrait who has come to life and escaped from her frame, wandering around Paris in a custom-made Rodarte gown.

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