Song of the Day: Lucy Dacus, "Ankles"

Lucy Dacus is in a weird position at the moment. She’s been a critically-acclaimed indie darling for a while but obviously leveled-up to playing arenas and winning Grammys as one third of sad girl supergroup Boygenius. She had enough momentum to sign with a major label, and her Geffen debut Forever Is a Feeling arrives this week. She’s obviously bigger than she’s even been, but I’m not certain people are super aware of who Lucy Dacus is, and the promo push for this album has only been made stranger by the fact that it seems to have focused mostly on her relationship with fellow Boygenius member Julien Baker (who people also kind of know but kind of don’t).

So there’s a lot of noise surrounding this record, and I can’t help but feel like it’s going to let everybody down on some level. I mostly can’t get past “Ankles,” one of the early singles that locks into a groovy mid-tempo mumble that is actually deeply intimate and horny. Like all elite singer-songwriters, Dacus functions best when she’s tapping into something acutely specific, and the line “Pull me by my ankles to the end of the bed/ Take me like you do in your dreams” speaks to a very particular version of a bedroom fantasy (as does the line about asking how you slept the next morning). There’s a visceral quality to it that makes it feel sexy without being gross.

Also, not to sound Amish, but I think ankles can be really sexy. Remember that one summer in the late ‘90s when suddenly all girls were going to the Gap and buying capri pants? That was a good season for young Kyle.