After success with Boygenius, Lucy Dacus steps into the spotlight

Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus were already very successful in their own right, but teaming up as Boygenius propelled them to a new level, scoring three Grammy awards, a number one single on Billboard, and praise from Rolling Stone, who called them “the world’s most exciting supergroup”.

This brings us to Dacus’s fourth album, continuing a run of polite folk-pop with real depth and what sounds like an increase in budget.

It’s notable that post-Boygenius, Dacus left the independent label Matador and signed with Geffen, part of Universal Music.

With that fame came increased scrutiny: the lyrics to this album had been thoroughly pored over before it was even released, fans analysing live performances of the songs and finding references to Dacus’s Boygenius co-member Julien Baker throughout (in a recent New Yorker profile, Dacus revealed their ongoing relationship).

Sonically Forever is a Feeling can tip into a kind of pleasant thrum, manicured to a fault, but Dacus’s songwriting - a blend of warmth and frost that sets her apart in a market somewhat saturated with confessional folk-adjacent songwriters - rises above it.

The references to the highs and lows of being in love - specifically in one's late 20s - will surely resonate with her newly inflated audience.

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In 2023, Auckland outfit Ringlets released their debut album just a year after their first single.

Everything about the band screamed confidence, from spiky live performances to mischievous radio appearances, and it was well-deserved.

Guitarist László Reynolds had already put out a few solo LPs, his last featuring innovative cover versions of Eastern European tunes. Its follow-up branches out stylistically while still reaching back to the past.

Gluten of the Eagle is a balance of intentionally casual and refined, with some songs feeling like they were captured off the cuff, but liner notes revealing mixing at Roundhead Studios.

There are hooky pianos, brittle post-punk guitar, and lovely acoustics, with Reynolds shifting his delivery to suit. The album’s mid-section merges five cover versions - one harking back to the 18th century, others more modern - into three tracks, firmly stamped with his idiosyncratic vision.

The originals are just as good, a mix of fearsome talent with impulsive delivery that’s always rewarding.

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In track one on her new album, Canadian techno musician Marie Davidson blends her voice with Amazon’s AI text-to-speech tool.

It’s not an endorsement: she told The Quietus she drew inspiration from Shoshana Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, and the passage quoted in the song “explains what we sacrificed for the idea of progress with artificial intelligence and algorithmic predictions”.

These ideas inform the whole album but not at the expense of the dancefloor. Davidson teamed with David and Stephen Dewaele, Belgian experts in irresistible dance music who perform as Soulwax and 2manydjs, and the results mix supercharged dancefloor anthems and occasional ‘80s pop smarts with her blunt, pithy vocal delivery.

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