On her third album, singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus confronts her past with gimlet-eyed veracity. Her brand of nostalgia is both pining—for people, the past, old feelings—and calling it out for what it was. "I know that the teen version of me wouldn't approve of me now, and that's embarrassing and a little bit heartbreaking," she has said—adding that revisiting places that were once significant can feel like "trespassing." Opener "Hot & Heavy" gets right at that. "Being back here makes me hot in the face," she sings a capella before the second verse kicks in with lush guitar and chiming piano and you realize that the "you" she's addressing is a past version of herself: "You used to be so sweet/ Now you're a firecracker on a crowded street." The vibrant, twinkling "Brando" tells the story of a "dramatic" high school friend—the kind who uses pop-culture references as a shield to pretend they are better than everyone else—who, Dacus has said, only wanted her "to be a scene partner in the movie of his life." The bouncy, Phoebe Bridgers-esque "First TIme" recalls the scary thrill of sneaking out of the house, with synth and then guitar shining like a bright beam of light to lead the way. "VBS"—as in Vacation Bible School, a summer program for Christian youth—is easy-loping and catchy as the clever Dacus looks back on her religious youth and an early romance. "In the summer of '07, I was sure I'd go to heaven/ But I was hedging my bets at VBS," she sings. Slightly off-kilter guitar sounds like a question, while the line "Playing Slayer at full volume helps to drown it out" is followed by a little explosion of metal noise for a punchline. Like her boygenius bandmate Julien Baker, Dacus grew up in a religious household; but while Baker has agonized over her doubts pretty viciously in her music, Dacus sounds like she has reached more of a settled reckoning. "Triple Dog Dare" remembers what it was like wrestling with religious condemnation of queer love, and "Christine" recalls "coming home from a sermon saying how pent-up evil we are." That song sounds light and tender, Dacus' delivery almost choir-like, but the lyrics are heartbreaking, addressing a friend slipping into an all-consuming relationship: "Nobody's perfect/ There may be better but you don't feel worth it/ That's where we disagree." Meanwhile, "Thumbs" is about meeting a college friend's abusive father and how hard it was to contain her rage. "I love your eyes and he has them ... I imagine my thumbs on the irises/ Pressing in until they burst," she sings, promising, "I would kill him if you let me." The music is spare, barely a shadow behind Dacus' voice, and she remains at an even keel—but that only makes her conviction sound all the more true. Who knew gauze could be so impenetrable? © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz