Review Summary: Delicious indie-pop with underlying potential.
Do you remember Halloween when you were eight years old? How you’d go door to door, stashing fistfuls of chocolate into a bucket or bag that got so heavy you could barely carry it at the end of the night? Then, upon arriving home you’d dump it all out on the table and just go to town? Well, that’s sort of like Lucius. They’re an incredibly indulgent bunch, making tight, upbeat pop music with more hooks than the recommended dosage, harmonies that overflow from your headphones, and production so polished that you can see yourself in the reflection. It’s the kind of saccharine indie-pop that is equally as capable of giving you a stomach ache as it is lifting your spirits.
For those who missed out on the Brooklyn quintet’s debut album
Wildewoman, here’s your chance to join in on the sugar binge.
Good Grief follows a very similar template to its predecessor, gushing with beautiful vocal harmonies from Berklee voice majors Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig – the respective cornerstones of the musical outfit. Their efforts hold
Good Grief together, making the presence of deliriously gorgeous vocals and extensive range a common theme. Lead single ‘Born Again Teen’ is a goldmine in that regard, although the strength of these women’s voices is a focal point at all times. If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s that (as with the album’s production) there’s very little in the way of satisfying grit. The outro of ‘Insane’, in which the two vocalists alternate turns shouting “I can be the one who’s gone insane” in increasingly demented tones is meant to be ironic , but it’s honestly the type of thing that would have elevated
Good Grief from ear candy to a true album of the year contender.
The way some media outlets try to push this group as genre benders, or even indie-folk in some cases (seriously, what?) is more than just a little bit of an oversell, but that doesn’t mean that Lucius’ latest effort falls directly under the umbrella of standard pop, either. There’s this loose sense of reintroducing the girl-group sound made famous by classic 60s bands such as The Ronettes, only with a more diversified and modern take. Even the lyrics, which are a stereotypical pitfall for bands like this, are capable of elevating the record to surprisingly imaginative levels. Take the album’s opening line for instance:
I had a dream where you were standing there with a gun up to my head
You were asking how it felt to which I said “I cannot lie there is a tingling down my spine”
You have revenge, I'll have it too -What's mine is yours and yours is mine
Then you laughed you said I was a poet and you loved my use of words
“But we had better get a move on or they'll find us”
Or, for something more grounded in standard wisdom, we’re treated to the album’s metaphorical and insightful curtain call via the string-laden ‘Dusty Trails’:
I'm half way to misery - some say when you go half way there's still plenty of time to return
Dusty trails can lead you to a golden road I've been told
The lyrics alone prove that Lucius can transcend the creativity and talent of your average pop outfit, decorating their collegiately educated tune sense with well-versed lyrics capable of making the average listener pause what he or she doing. If they focused just a little less on sounding
perfect and a little more on mirroring the emotions portrayed by their lyrics, Lucius would be capable of crafting a true masterpiece. They’ve already displayed their talent across multiple musical fronts, so hopefully their next album will be the one to take the leap from perfectly executed to perfectly human.
Good Grief is the album that solidifies Lucius’ presence in the world of music. The talent is there, the songwriting is excellent, and they’re about as fun to listen to as anyone. There isn’t a day this spring or summer that ‘Something About You’ won’t make for a phenomenal
riding in the car with the hood downexperience, or that ‘Born Again Teen’ isn’t going to make you want to get out of your chair and dance like there’s no tomorrow. We’ve all suffered through trite indie-pop bands of a lesser talent pool who’ve tried to pull off an album of this scope, so hearing Wolfe and Laessig dissect every octave of
Good Grief with nimble ease is quite refreshing. Pop music
this shiny and smooth always captures our ears but rarely captures our hearts. Even if the same is true for the sticky sweet
Good Grief, it provides a silver lining for Lucius to aspire towards. After all, it’s definitely one that they’re capable of reaching if they would just allow themselves to smudge that perfectly sleek reflection that they appear to be so fixated on.
