In a career thus far filled with assured, near timeless, albums, Lucius’s latest is a misstep into an already mined past.
Lucius came on to the scene in 2014 with Wildewoman, still to my ears their best album. In Wildewoman, they presented as a vocal force that could stand alongside any of the premiere vocalists, while delivering songs about empowerment, life’s missteps, and charging through it all anyways. Lead singer’s Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig “are they or aren’t they twins”, with their similarly styled clothes and hair, just added to the mystique of this band.
Just two years later in 2016 Lucius kicked off their album Good Grief with one of the best opening tracks of all time “Madness”. Despite the fantastic start, and the as always incredible vocals, after that opener the album for me was more mixed, with tracks like “Something About You”, “Almost Makes Me Wish for Rain” and “Almighty Gosh ” successful despite of, and not because of, the lean towards Jack Antonoff / 80s era production.Their follow-up compilation album NUDES, where they stripped some of these earlier tracks to their acoustic roots, revealed that the roots were strong and showed that these production shifts really didn’t suit their style.
Since then Lucius has continued to be a go-to when an artist needs a feature, with everyone from Brandi Carlile to Harry Styles, Kurt Vile to The War on Drugs, calling on the vocal power of Wolfe and Laessig. One might wonder if this proximity to the stardom Lucius so deserves is the cause of the sudden shift in their latest Second Nature to “palatable pop”; however, to hear Carlile tell it David Cobb, her co-producer on the album, told her at a Lucius show “‘They need to make an ABBA record, and they need some Bee Gees.’ Carlile was skeptical, but alas this skepticism clearly lost out. (One can’t help but wonder if Cobb’s production of Barry Gibb’s album at a similar time had any relation.)
Lucius’s latest attempts to mimic Cobb’s 80’s era pop stars and more, including the aforementioned ABBA, Bee Gees, and the as yet mentioned but so relevant Janet Jackson, Robyn, and more, leave the listener the feeling of having heard it all before and wanting less.
Questionable choices abound with “Heartbursts” yearning more for Robyn/Cyndi Lauper status than any true sense of eternal love. “Dance Around It”, featuring Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow, somehow fails all 3 artists involved, with a candy pop song that diminishes all 3 vocal performances and is easily forgotten, as it had nothing in its center to begin with. Even their debut single “Next to Normal”, while successful in lyrically conveying the ostracization many of us feel, completely falls flat as the infusion of neo-disco is so mismatched stylistically. (Look for a Callum Scott of the future to cover this song stripped down and find much more success.)
Not all is lacking however on this album. “24”’s intro takes the listener to church, and the minimal production lets Lucius do what they do best, belting out thoughtful songs with incredible tone and power. The title track also wonderfully evokes Motown vibes with the vocals, and that’s successfully blended together with a funky bass line that drives the song and keeps you moving. “The Man I’ll Never Find” is a career highlight from Lucius, even though it feels like such an outlier on this album, yet so fitting with their back catalog.
In the same year that Lucius dropped their debut Wildewoman, they opened for Tegan and Sara who made their successful strive for pop adoration that year with “Hearthrob”. To me it seems like in many ways Lucius with this new release is trapped in that thinking and that time. Tegan and Sara did reach their highest peak on the charts with Hearthrob, so maybe they saw the value? However as Lucius reaches back to the all-too-familiar to strive for stardom, they have instead missed a chance to show the world what has made Lucius the best, lesser known band around, that producers Cobb and Carlile recognized at that live show. By trying to push Lucius out of the shadows of so many artists though, the band and producers instead pushed Lucius into molds filled, and worn out, by so many artists long past.
