I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore

The arrangement opens with a measured, almost deliberate restraint — guitar that moves slowly, a rhythm section that holds back just enough to create a feeling of weight, of each note costing something. Lucy Dacus's voice is low and full and completely unadorned, the kind of instrument that doesn't need effects to carry an entire room. She's not straining; she's explaining, and that conversational steadiness is what makes the song feel devastating rather than melodramatic. The subject is a particular emotional labor — the exhaustion of being the person who deflects with humor, who makes everyone comfortable at their own expense, who has spent so long being funny that they've lost track of whether there's anything else underneath. It's a song about wanting to be taken seriously, and Dacus sings it with such quiet certainty that the want never tips into self-pity. Toward the end, the music opens up slightly, the guitars broadening, and the release is earned. This came out of the Richmond indie scene that produced a generation of women making emotionally unguarded, unhurried rock music, and it sits at the more stripped-back end of that world. You'd put this on at the end of a long week when you're tired of performing, when you want music that already knows exactly how you feel.