Former Philadelphian Lucy Dacus plays a very Philly show to kick off her ‘Forever Is a Feeling’ tour

Lucy Dacus doesn’t live here anymore, but many of the songs on the Richmond, Va.-raised songwriter’s new album Forever Is a Feeling came into being while she resided in Philadelphia before heading west to Los Angeles in 2023.

So that meant Dacus’ tour-opening show at the Met Philly on North Broad Street on Wednesday was kind of a “Big Deal,” to evoke the title of a Forever standout track.

The singer-guitarist’s audience as a solo artist has grown since the explosion in popularity of boygenius, the indie-rock trio of which she is a member.

“I lived here for five years,” Dacus said before “Lost Time,” toward the end of her 90-minute ecstatically-received set fronting a five-piece band that included Philly bass player Dominic Angelella. “And there’s a huge part of me that will live here forever.”

“Lost Time” is not only a Marcel Proust reference on an album whose cover image is a photorealistic oil painting of Dacus by Will St. John that is hanging at the Barnes Foundation through Friday. It’s also a Philly -in-springtime song about missing Julien Baker, Dacus’ boygenius bandmate and romantic partner.

It strikes familiar themes of longing for Dacus, who has spoken in interviews about how fear of forgetting compels her to write. And it also offers a timely snapshot of Philadelphia in spring, with cherry blossoms in bloom.

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“The sidewalk’s paved with petals like a wedding aisle, I wonder how long it would take to walk eight hundred miles,” Dacus sang, measuring the distance between Philadelphia and Nashville, where Baker was living before the two musicians moved in together in L.A.

The Philly-ness of Wednesday’s show — a not quite sold-out affair with a an audience about 75% female, from teenagers to thirtysomethings — was also strong in “Modigliani.”

That song, written for Dacus’ other boygenius bandmate, Phoebe Bridgers, was inspired by time spent at the Barnes gazing at portraits by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, who depicted his models with oval visages. (And no, Dacus was not able to resist making a “long in the face” pun about “Modigliani melancholy.”)

The stage design was artfully done with images of Modiglianis where appropriate, and when band intros were made, the musicians’ faces were shown on a screen rendered in painterly style, with Angelella’s appearing to be like a Van Gogh.

Celestial cherubs appeared during “Ankles,” the lead single love (and lust) song from Forever in which Dacus isn’t shy about giving voice to her desire for pleasures of the flesh: “Pull me by the ankles to the edge of the bed,” she sang, “and take me like you do in your dreams.”

In her pre- “Lost Time” spoken interlude, Dacus talked about being nervous “on the brink of illness” as things weren’t clicking to her satisfaction in rehearsals leading up to the tour kickoff.

But being on stage before her people — who also greeted opening acts Katie Gavin and jasmine.4.t enthusiastically — she realized she had little to worry about. “God forgive me, this is corny,” she said. “But y’all were missing. Like truly, y’all are a huge part of the show.”

Dacus is a sharp-eyed, perceptive songwriter and a keen observer, and she’s a master of a killer closing line.

A prime example is the way she brought “For Keeps” to a devastating conclusion on Wednesday, as the song’s protagonist realizes that a love affair is not destined to last: “I still miss you when I’m with you,” she sang. “Because I know we’re not playing for keeps.”

But while Forever — Dacus’ fourth album, and first for a major label — is her most sexually frank, emotionally open book of an album, it also suffers from a mid-tempo samey-ness.

It’s too decorous chamber-rock vibe is as comfortable as the plush couch Dacus sat on for an acoustic interlude that included a duet with Gavin on “Bullseye,” which is sung by Hozier on the record.

That’s where the “huge part” the crowd plays came in.

Forever is flawed in that its songs of passion are delivered with too much politesse. Dacus sings “I wanna scream from the bottom of my lungs / I want to scream my throat raw” on “Come Out” without raising her voice.

But in a live setting, with an adoring crowd that had committed to memory every word of every song, old and new, and was amped up with opening night anticipation, that hardly mattered.

What is tepid on record comes alive in the moment. And though the set list was heavy with 11 songs from Forever, it also included choice cuts like “VBS” and “Hot & Heavy” from 2021’s Home Video and the stellar “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore” from her 2016 breakthrough debut, No Burden.

And for the encore, catharsis was achieved: first with “True Blue,” from boygenius’ 2023 The Record, and then with “Night Shift,” the slow-building bridge-burner from Dacus’ 2018 Historian, which cut loose with the volume turned up while actual screaming transpired.

Gavin, who is the chief songwriter in indie trio Muna, was an excellent opener. Fronting a four-piece band that tended toward the folkie rather than the synth pop leanings of Muna, she played guitar, piano, violin, and Shruti box, a droning, percussive Indian instrument similar to a harmonium.

Her songs (which she has described as “Lilith Fair-core”) from last year’s solo debut, What a Relief, released on Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label, were subtle and lively. And she was a skilled community builder on stage, expressing surprise at how well the crowd knew her music and shouting out her solidarity as a queer woman with all “trans people, immigrants, and minorities” in stressful times.

“Calliope Prelude”

“Hot & Heavy”

“Ankles”

“Big Deal”

“Modigliani”

“Limerence”

“Talk”

“VBS”

“Partner in Crime”

“I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore”

“Bullseye”

“Most Wanted Man”

“Lost Time”

“Forever Is a Feeling”

Encore

“True Blue”

“Night Shift”